Sylvia’s illness increased during the day; her fever rose rapidly and the coughing spells grew more violent and more frequent. Nyoda turned Hercules over to Sherry and Justice and gave Sylvia her whole attention. No whisper of the exciting news that rocked the family was allowed to come to her ears for fear of its effect upon the fever.
“Bronchitis,” the doctor had said whom Nyoda had hastily summoned, “watch out for pneumonia.”
The Winnebagos roamed the house, anxious and excited, talking in low tones about the amazing turn of events, and listening eagerly for Nyoda to come out of the sick room. Slim and the Captain shifted uneasily from one chair to another until Katherine begged them to go out and take a long walk.
“You make me nervous, trying so hard to keep quiet,” she said to Slim.
The boys went out.
Migwan made some lemon jelly for Hercules and Sahwah carried it out to him.
“Does he still believe he’s dying?” asked Katherine when Sahwah returned to the house.
“He’s surer than ever,” replied Sahwah. “He’s making the arrangements for his funeral. He’s sorry now that he didn’t join the Knights of Pythias when he had the chance so he could have had a band.”
“Is he really as sick as that?” asked Hinpoha in a scared voice.
“Sherry says he isn’t,” said Sahwah, “but Hercules insists that he won’t live till morning. Sherry’s getting sort of anxious about him himself, Justice told me outside the barn. Sherry said that Hercules believed so firmly in signs he’d just naturally worry himself to death before long, if he didn’t stop thinking about the ‘token’ he’d had. People do that sometimes. Hercules’ heartisbad and believing that his end was near might bring on a fatal spell.”
“Can’t we do something to make him stop thinking about it?” asked Migwan. “Remember the Dark of the Moon Society, Sahwah, that you got up to bring Katherine out of a fit of the blues that time up on Ellen’s Isle?”
“We can’t do anything like that now, though,” said Sahwah. “The foolish things we do wouldn’t have any effect upon him at all.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Migwan with a sigh, after various things had been suggested and immediately abandoned. “But I wish we could do something to rouse him from the dumps he’s fallen into,” she added with a sigh. “It seems as though we Winnebagos ought to be equal to the emergency.”
“You might read something to him,” said Katherine desperately, after several minutes of hard thinking had sprouted no ideas. “Read him ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ That will gently divert his thoughts. It’s absolutely the biggest thriller that was ever written. Judge Dalrymple bought it on the train once, when he was going from Milwaukee to some little town in Wisconsin, and he got so absorbed in it that he never came to until the train pulled into St. Paul, hundreds of miles beyond his stop. You might read him one chapter a day and he won’t think of dying before he knows how it is coming out. It’ll be a sort of Arabian Nights performance.”
“Where will I get the book?” asked Migwan.
“I saw it in one of the cases in the library,” replied Katherine. “It must have belonged to Mr. Carver’s housekeeper, for I’m sure he never owned such a book.”
“All right,” said Migwan, “let’s take it out and tell Justice to read it to Hercules.”
Katherine found the book on the library shelf and opened it to a picture she wanted the girls to see. As she turned the pages a letter fell out and dropped to the floor. She stopped to pick it up, and could not help reading the address. It was addressed to Mr. Jasper Carver, Esquire, and had never been opened.
“Here’s a letter for Uncle Jasper that must have come after he died,” said Katherine, “for it hasn’t been opened.” Nyoda came into the room just then, and she handed it to her.
Nyoda looked at the date. “April 12, 1917,” she read. “That’s the very day Uncle Jasper died. This letter must have come while he lay dead in the house here, and in the confusion somebody put it into that book, where it has stayed all this while. I opened all the other letters that came after his death and took care of the matters they concerned. I hope this isn’t a bill—the creditor will think we are poor business people not to reply.” She reached for the letter opener and slit the envelope.
Inside was a letter, not a bill, written in a cramped, shaky hand upon coarse notepaper. It was dated from a small town in New York State. Nyoda carried it over to the window and read it:
“Mr. Jasper Carver, Esq.,
“Mr. Jasper Carver, Esq.,
Oakwood, Pa.
Oakwood, Pa.
Dear Sir:
Dear Sir:
I take the liberty of writing to you, for you are the only one I can find a trace of who was a friend of the late Dr. Sidney Phillips. I found a card with your name and address on the floor of his room after he left the army post at Ft. Andrews, and to you I am committing the task of clearing his name from a disgrace which has unjustly been fastened upon it. He is dead, and the wrong can never be righted to him, but for the sake of his friends and relatives his memory must not remain dishonored.
This letter is at once an explanation and a confession. I was a Captain of Infantry at Ft. Andrews when Dr. Phillips came there as army surgeon. There was another officer there, a sneaking, underhand sort of chap with whom I was having constant trouble. Upon one occasion he committed a grave breach of military discipline, but managed to throw the blame upon me and I was deprived of my captain’s commission and reduced to the ranks, besides doing time in the guard house.
I brooded upon my wrong until I was ready to murder the man who had brought it upon me. At the time of the typhoid epidemic, matters were in bad shape at Ft. Andrews. That was before the days of Red Cross nurses, and many of the boys had to turn in and nurse their comrades. I was detailed to help Dr. Phillips. The man who had ruined me was down with the fever. Ever since I had been reduced to the ranks he had taunted me openly with my disgrace and even as he lay in bed he made insulting remarks when I brought him his medicine. Finally in a mad rage I decided to be revenged upon him once and forever. I put a deadly poison into the dose Dr. Phillips had just mixed for him, slipping it in while the doctor was out of the room for a moment. I thought the dose was intended for him alone, but to my horror it was given to a dozen men, and they all died.
The whole country became stirred up about it, and such abuse was hurled at Dr. Phillips as no man ever suffered before. It was supposed that he had carelessly mistaken the poison for another harmless ingredient. I dared not confess that it was I who had done it, for in my case it would mean trial for first degree murder, while with the doctor it was simply a case of accident, and would blow over in time.
The doctor left the Post, a broken-down, ruined man, and died of yellow fever in Cuba not long after.
I have kept the secret for twenty-five years, suffering tortures of conscience, but not brave enough to confess. Now, however, I am in the last stages of a fatal disease and cannot live a week longer. By the time this reaches you I shall be gone. Take this confession and publish it to the world, that tardy justice may be done the memory of Dr. Phillips. He was innocent of the whole thing. May God forgive me!
George Ingram.”
George Ingram.”
The confession was witnessed by two doctors whose signatures appeared under his.
“He didn’t do it! Tad didn’t do it!”
The amazed cry rang through the library, as the Winnebagos and Nyoda clutched each other convulsively.
“We must bring him back!” said Nyoda, and ran out to the barn to Sherry with the letter in her hand.
An hour later Sherry and Hercules sat drinking strong, hot coffee at the kitchen table while Nyoda hastily packed traveling bags for them. Hercules had forgotten all about dying. When he heard the news in the letter he sprang from bed and began dressing with greater speed than he had ever done in his life. The train for New York went in two hours and he and Sherry must catch it if they hoped to reach the steamer before she sailed. There was no way of reaching Tad by telegraph. They did not know what name he was going under, nor the name of the boat on which he was to sail. The only thing they could do was rush to New York, find out which boat was sailing for South America on the first, go on board and search for Tad. Only Hercules would be able to identify him. Hercules rose to the occasion.
“We certainly gave Hercules something to make him forget his superstition,” said Katherine, sitting down on the sink to collect her thoughts after the meteoric flight of the two men from the house.
“We certainly did,” said Migwan, trembling with excitement.
A racking cough sounded through the house. “Sh, Sylvia’s worse,” said Migwan, putting her fingers to her lips. “Don’t anybody go near her, or she’ll notice how excited you are. How on earth does Nyoda manage to keep so calm when she’s with her?”
“If Sylvia should get pneumonia—” began Sahwah, and then chocked over the dreadful possibility.
“If they only bring Mr. Phillips back in time,” said Katherine, as if echoing the thing that lay in Sahwah’s thoughts.
“Don’t say such dreadful things,” said Hinpoha, with starting tears.
“Maybe they won’t be able to find him at all,” said Katherine dubiously.
“Theymust, theymust,” said Sahwah, with dry lips.
“Theymust,” echoed the others, and hardly daring to think, they entered upon the trying period of waiting.
“How is Sylvia?” Katherine’s voice was husky with anxiety.
Nyoda looked grave over the tray she was carrying down to the kitchen. “No better yet; a little worse this morning, if anything. Her fever has gone up one degree during the night and she is coughing more than ever.”
“Is it going to be pneumonia?” asked Katherine steadily, her eyes searching Nyoda’s face.
“Not if I can help it,” replied Nyoda, in a tone of grim determination, the light of battle sparkling in her eyes. Nevertheless, there was a note of worry in her voice that struck cold fear into Katherine’s heart, stoutly optimistic as she was. What if Sylvia should die before her father came back? The other Winnebagos, clustering around Nyoda to hear the latest news from Sylvia’s bedside, stood hushed and solemn. Nyoda set the tray down on the table and leaned wearily against the door, her eyes heavy from lack of sleep. Instantly Migwan was at her side, all solicitude.
“Go, lie down and sleep awhile, Nyoda,” she urged. “You’ve been up nearly all night. I can look after Sylvia for a few hours—I know how. Go to bed now and we’ll bring some breakfast up to you, and then you can go to sleep.” Putting her arm around Nyoda she led her upstairs and tucked her into bed, smoothing the covers over her with gentle, motherly hands, while the girls below prepared a dainty breakfast tray.
“Nice—child!” murmured Nyoda, from the depths of her pillow. “Nice—old—Migwan! Always—taking—care—of—someone!” Her voice trailed off in a tired whisper, and by the time the breakfast tray arrived she was sound asleep.
Sylvia also slept most of the time that Migwan watched beside her, a fitful slumber broken by many coughing spells and intervals of difficult breathing. Never had Sylvia seemed so beautiful and so princesslike to Migwan as when she lay there sleeping in the big four-poster bed, her shining curls spread out on the pillow and her fever-flushed cheeks glowing like roses. Lying there so still, with her delicate little white hand resting on top of the coverlet, she brought to Migwan’s mind Goethe’s description of the beautiful, dead Mignon, in whom the vivid tints of life had been counterfeited by skillful hands. To Migwan’s lively imagination it seemed that Sylvia was another Mignon, this child of lofty birth and breeding also cast by accident among humble surroundings, and singing her way into the hearts of people. Would it be with her as it had been with Mignon; would she never be reunited in life with her own people? The resemblance between the two lives struck Migwan as a prophecy and her heart chilled with the conviction that Sylvia was going to die. Tears stole down her cheek as she saw, in her mind’s eye, the father coming in just too late, and their beautiful, radiant Sylvia lying cold and still, her joyful song forever hushed.
Migwan’s melancholy mood lasted all morning, even after Nyoda came back and sent her out of the sick-room, and she sat staring into the library fire in gloomy silence, quite unlike her busy, cheery self. The day crept by on leaden feet. The hands of the clock seemed to be suffering from paralysis; they stayed so long in one spot. Ordinarily clock hands at Carver House went whirling around their dials like pinwheels, and the chimes were continually striking the hour. Now each separate minute seemed to have brought its knitting and come to stay.
“No word from Sherry and Hercules yet!” sighed Sahwah impatiently, as the whistles blew half past eleven.
“Give them a chance,” said Katherine, her voice proceeding in muffled tones from the depths of the music cabinet, which, in order to pass away the time, she had undertaken to set to rights.
“They’ve had plenty of chance by this time to get down on board the boat,” returned Sahwah, getting up from her chair and pacing restlessly up and down the room. Sahwah was not equipped by nature to bear suspense calmly; under the stress of inaction she threatened to fly to pieces.
Katherine looked up with a faint smile from the heaps of sheet music lying on the floor around her.
“Come and help me sort this music,” she advised mildly, “it’ll settle your mind somewhat, besides giving me a lift. I’m afraid I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. This is one grand mess of pieces without covers and covers without pieces. You might get all the covers in order for me.”
Sahwah gazed without enthusiasm upon the littered floor. “Sort music—ugh!” she said, with a grimace and a disgusted shrug of her shoulders. She picked her way to the other end of the library and stood staring restlessly out of the window.
It was a dreary, dull day. The Christmas snow had vanished in a thaw, and a chilly rain beat against the window panes with a dismal, melancholy sound. The three boys fidgeted from one end of the house to the other, but could not get up enough steam to go out for a hike. Slim and the Captain drummed chopsticks on the piano, and Justice tried to keep up with them on the harp, until Migwan ordered them to be quiet so Sylvia could sleep, after which they sat in preternatural silence before the library fire, listlessly turning over the pages of magazines which they did not even pretend to read. The atmosphere of the house got so on everybody’s nerves that the snapping of a log in the fireplace almost caused a panic.
The clock struck twelve, and Migwan, rousing herself from her preoccupation, went out into the kitchen to prepare lunch, aided by Gladys and Hinpoha, while Sahwah continued to pace the floor and Katherine went on nervously fitting covers to pieces and pieces to covers, her ear ever on the alert for the sound of the telephone bell. Justice and Slim and the Captain, grown weary of their own company, trooped out into the kitchen after the girls, declaringtheywere going to get lunch, and it was not long before the inevitable reaction had set in, and pent-up spirits began to find vent in irrepressible hilarity.
Protests were useless. In vain Migwan flourished her big iron spoon and ordered them out. Justice calmly took her apron and cap away from her and announced thathewas going to be Chief Cook. Tying the apron around him wrong side out, and setting the cap backward on his head, he held the spoon aloft like a Roman short-sword, and striking an attitude in imitation of Spartacus addressing the Gladiators, he declaimed feelingly:
“Ye call meChef, and ye do well to call himChefWho for seven long years has camped in summertime,And made his coffee out of rain when there was no spring water handy,And mixed his biscuits in the wash-basin,Because the baking-pan no longer was.
“Ye call meChef, and ye do well to call himChef
Who for seven long years has camped in summertime,
And made his coffee out of rain when there was no spring water handy,
And mixed his biscuits in the wash-basin,
Because the baking-pan no longer was.
But I was not always thus, an unhired butcher,A savageChefof still more savage menus——”
But I was not always thus, an unhired butcher,
A savageChefof still more savage menus——”
The teakettle suddenly boiled over with a loud hissing and sizzling, and the impassioned orator jumped as though he had been shot; then, collecting himself, he rushed over and picked the kettle from the stove and stood holding it in his hand, uncertain what to do with it.
“Set it down on the back of the stove!” commanded Migwan. “A great cook you are! Even Slim would know enough to do that!”
“Thanks for the implied compliment,” said Slim stiffly.
“Slim ought to be Chief Cook,” said the Captain. “He’s fat. Chief cooks are always fat.”
“Right you are!” cried Justice, taking off the apron and tying it around Slim as far as it would go.
“But I can’t cook!” protested Slim.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” replied Justice. “You look the part, and that’s all that’s needed. Looks are everything, these days.”
He perched the cap rakishly on top of Slim’s head and stood off a little distance to eye the effect critically.
“Nobody could tell the difference between you and the Chef of the Waldorf,” was his verdict.
Indeed, Slim, with his full moon face shining out under the cap, and the apron tied around his extensive waistline, looked just like the pictured cooks in the spaghetti advertisements.
“Isn’t he the perfect Chef, though?” continued Justice admiringly. “He must have been born with an iron spoon in his hand, instead of a gold one in his mouth.” Then, turning to Slim and bowing low before him, he chanted solemnly, “Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena, go forth, beloved of heaven! All the other cooks will drown themselves in their soup kettles in despair when they see you coming. All hail the Chief Cook!”
“But I can’t cook!” repeated Slim helplessly.
“You don’t have to,” Justice reassured him. “Chief Cooks don’t have to cook; they just direct the others. Behold, we stand ready to obey your lightest command.”
“All right,” said Slim, “suppose you pare the potatoes.”
“Ask me anything but that!” Justice begged him. “I never get the eyes cut out, and then when they’re on my plate they look up at me reproachfully, like this——”
Justice screwed up his face and rolled his eyes into a grimace that convulsed the girls.
“No, you pare the potatoes, Slim,” he continued. “The Chief Cook always pares the potatoes himself. It’s too delicate a job to entrust to a subordinate.”
Slim had his mouth open to protest, and Sahwah and Katherine, who had just wandered out into the kitchen, were in a gale of merriment over Slim’s costume, when the doorbell rang and a messengerboy passed in a telegram.
They all pressed around eagerly while Katherine read it. It was from Sherry:
“South America boat sailed yesterday. Dr. Phillips gone. Can get no clue. Coming home to-night.”
“South America boat sailed yesterday. Dr. Phillips gone. Can get no clue. Coming home to-night.”
A long, tragic “Oh-h-h!” from Hinpoha broke the stricken silence which had fallen on the group at the reading of the message.
“Tough luck,” said the Captain feelingly, and Justice repeated, “Tough luck,” like an echo.
The Winnebagos glanced uncertainly toward the stairway and looked at each other inquiringly.
“Somebody go up and call Nyoda,” said Katherine.
Just at that moment the door of Sylvia’s room opened and Nyoda came running downstairs with light, swift footsteps, her face wreathed in smiles.
“Sylvia’s better,” she called, before she was halfway down. “The fever left her while she was sleeping, and her temperature is normal. The danger of pneumonia is over. I’m so relieved.” She skipped down the last of the stairs like a young girl.
Then she caught sight of the telegram in Katherine’s hand, and sensed the atmosphere of depression that prevailed in the lower hall. She knew the truth before a word was spoken, and composed herself to meet it.
“They were too late?” she said quietly, as she joined the group, and held out her hand for the bit of yellow paper.
“Poor Sylvia!” she exclaimed huskily. “She would soon be well enough to hear the news—and now there is nothing to tell her. If we had only found that letter a day sooner!”
“Does anyone want to go in to the city this afternoon?” asked Nyoda, as they rose from luncheon. It had been a rather silent, dispirited meal, and quickly gotten over with. “I had planned to go in and take a few things to Mrs. Deane to-day, but now it will be impossible for me to get away. Sylvia has been fretting about her aunt and I think someone ought to go.”
“I’ll go,” said Katherine readily, her spirits rising at this prospect of action. The suspense of the morning, ending in such a disappointment, had begun to react upon her in a fit of the blues. Sahwah and Hinpoha, with Slim and the Captain, had planned during luncheon to go roller-skating that afternoon, but as Katherine could not roller-skate the plan held no attraction for her. Justice had promised Sherry that he would go over the lighting system on his car while he was away and was planning to spend the whole afternoon in the garage; Migwan was going to sit with Sylvia to give Nyoda a chance to rest; and Gladys had a sore throat which made her disinclined to talk. Taking it by and large, Katherine had anticipated a rather dismal afternoon, a prospect which was pleasantly altered by Nyoda’s request.
“You can make the two o’clock train if you start immediately,” continued Nyoda, “and the five-fifteen will bring you back in time for dinner. I have the things for Mrs. Deane all ready.”
Katherine rose with alacrity and put on her hat and coat. “Any errands while I am in town?” she asked, hunting for her umbrella in the stair closet.
“None that I can think of,” replied Nyoda, after wrinkling her brow for a moment, “unless you want to stop at the jeweller’s and get my watch. It’s been there for several weeks, being regulated.”
“All right,” said Katherine, writing down the name of the jeweller in her memorandum book. “You’ll notice I’m not trusting my memory this time,” she remarked laughingly.
“I’ll take the five-fifteen train back,” she called over her shoulder as she went out of the front door.
“Be careful how you hold that package!” Nyoda called warningly after her. “There’s a glass of jelly in it that’ll upset!”
Gingerly holding the package by the string, Katherine picked her way through the rapidly widening puddles on the sidewalks to the station. By some miracle of good luck the package was still right side up when she arrived at the hospital, and she breathed an audible sigh of relief when it was at last safely out of her hands.
She found Mrs. Deane a frail, kindly-faced woman, bearing her discomfort cheerfully, but, nevertheless, lonesome in this strange hospital ward and very grateful for any attention shown her. Katherine began, as she described it, to “express her sympathy quietly and in a ladylike manner,” and ended up by delivering her famous “Wimmen’s Rights” speech for the benefit of the whole ward. She finally escaped, after her sixth encore, and fetched up breathless on the sidewalk, only to discover that she had left her umbrella behind, and before she retrieved it she had to give her speech all over again, for the benefit of an old lady who had been asleep during the first performance.
There still being three-quarters of an hour before train time after she had called at the jewellers for Nyoda’s watch, Katherine dropped into a smart little tea-room to while away the intervening moments with a cup of tea and a dish of her favorite shrimp salad. As she nibbled leisurely at a dainty round of brown bread and idly watched the throngs coming and going at the tables around her, a shrill cry of delight suddenly rang out above the hum of voices and the clatter of dishes.
“Katherine! Katherine Adams!”
Katherine looked up to see an animated little figure in a beaver coat and fur hat coming toward her through the crowd.
“Katherine Adams!” repeated the voice, “don’t you know me?”
“Why—Veronica! Veronica Lehar!” gasped Katherine in amazement. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in New York.” She caught the little brown-gloved hands in her own big ones and squeezed them until Veronica winced.
“Katherine! Dear old K! How I’ve missed you!” Veronica cried rapturously, and drawing her hands from Katherine’s grip she flung her arms impulsively around her neck, regardless of the curious stares of the onlookers.
“Let them stare!” she murmured stoutly, seeing Katherine’s face flush with embarrassment as she encountered the quizzical gaze of a keen-eyed young man at the next table. “If they hadn’t seen their beloved K for nearly two years they’d want to hug her, too.”
She released Katherine after a final squeeze, and stood staring at her with a puzzled expression on her vivacious face.
“What’s the matter?” asked Katherine wonderingly. “Have I got something on wrong-side before?”
“That’s just whatisthe matter,” replied Veronica, her bewilderment also manifesting itself in her tone. “Youhaven’tanything on wrong-side before. You don’t look natural. What has happened to you?”
“Nothing,” replied Katherine, laughing, “and—everything. I’ve just learned that clothesdomatter, after all.”
“Why, Katherine Adams, you’re perfectly stunning!” exclaimed Veronica in sincere admiration. “That shade of blue in your dress—it was simplymadefor you.”
“I just happened to get it by accident,” said Katherine deprecatingly, almost sheepishly, yet thrilled through and through with pleasure at Veronica’s words of appreciation. It was no small triumph to be admired by Veronica, whose highly artistic nature made her extremely critical of people’s appearance.
“How I used to make your artistic eye water!” said Katherine laughingly. “It’s a wonder you stood me as well as you did.”
“It was not I who had to ‘stand’ you, but you who had to ‘stand’ me,” said Veronica seriously. “In spite of your loose ends you were—what do you call it? ‘all wool and a yard wide,’ but I was the original prune.” Veronica, while a perfect master of literary English, still faltered deliciously over slang phrases.
Katherine, as usual, steered away from the subject of Veronica’s former attitude toward her. When a thing was over and done with, Katherine argued, there was no use of dragging it out into the light again.
“You haven’t told me yet how you happen to be here in this tea-room this afternoon,” she said, by way of changing the subject, “when you told us, over your own signature, that you would have to stay in New York all this week. What do you mean,” she finished with mock gravity, “by deceiving us so?”
“I have to play at a concert here in town to-night,” explained Veronica. “It will be necessary for me to be back at the Conservatory to-morrow, and am returning by a late train to-night. I didn’t know about it when I wrote to Nyoda, or I should have insisted on her coming in for the concert and bringing all the girls along. It’s an emergency case; I’m just filling in on the program in place of a ’cello soloist who was taken suddenly ill with influenza. The concert managers sent a hurry call to Martini last night, asking him to send over the first student who happened to be handy, and as I happened to be taking a lesson from Martini at the time, I was the lucky one. I just came over this afternoon.”
Veronica modestly suppressed the fact that it had been the great Martini himself who had been urgently requested to play at the concert, but having a previous engagement, had chosen her, out of the whole Conservatory, to play in his stead.
“My aunt is here with me,” continued Veronica. “She’s over at that table in the far corner behind that palm. I suppose she is wondering what has become of me by this time. When I saw you over here I just jumped up and ran off without a word of explanation. She’s probably eaten up my nut rolls by this time, too; they were just being served when I rushed away. Come on over and see her.”
Katherine followed Veronica through the crowded room to the far corner, where, at a little table beneath a softly shaded wall lamp Veronica’s aunt, Mrs. Lehar, sat placidly sipping tea and eating cakes. She did not recognize Katherine at first, never having seen her otherwise than with clothes awry and hair tumbling down over her eyes, and Katherine was secretly amused at the gentle lady’s look of astonishment upon being told who it was.
“She did eat my rolls, after all,” said Veronica to Katherine. “I knew she would. But I’m glad she did; I am in far too exalted a mood for nut rolls now. Nothing but nectar and ambrosia will do to celebrate our meeting. Look and see if there’s any nectar and ambrosia on your menu card, will you, Katherine dear? There doesn’t seem to be any on mine.”
“None here, either,” reported Katherine, after gravely reading her card through.
“Then let’s compromise on lobster croquettes,” said Veronica. “I never eat them ordinarily, but I feel as though I could eat a dozen to celebrate this occasion.”
“Be careful what you eat, now,” warned her aunt. “It would be rather awkward if you were to be taken with an attack of acute indigestion just when you are due to appear on the platform.”
“Never fear!” laughed Veronica. “I am so transported over meeting Katherine that nothing could give me indigestion now. What an inspiration I shall have to play to-night!”
Then, taking Katherine’s hand, she said coaxingly, “You will come and hear me play, won’t you?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” replied Katherine regretfully. “I’m due to go back on the five-fifteen train.”
“O, but youmustcome!” cried Veronica pleadingly. “I’ll be so miserable if you don’t that I sha’n’t be able to play at all. You wouldn’t want me to spoil the concert on your account, would you, Katherine dear? There is a later train you can go home on just as well, isn’t there?”
“There is one at ten-forty-five,” replied Katherine, consulting the time-table which she carried in her hand bag.
“You can hear me play, and make that train, too,” said Veronica eagerly. “My numbers come in the early part of the program, all but one. If you went out after I had played my first group you could make your train beautifully. Do telephone Nyoda that you are going to stay over, and have her send somebody down to meet you at the later train. That Justice person——” she said mischievously, finishing with an expressive movement of her eyebrows.
Katherine finally yielded to her pleading, and telephoned Nyoda that she was going to stay in town until the ten-forty-five, which so delighted Veronica that she ordered another croquette all the way around to celebrate the happy circumstance.
“Dobe careful, dear,” warned her aunt a second time. “Those croquettes are distressingly rich. Whatwouldhappen if you were to be taken ill to-night?”
Veronica smiled serenely. “I’m not going to be taken ill to-night, aunty dear,” she replied. “I’m going to be like Katherine, who can eat forty lobster croquettes without getting sick.”
“Remember the mixtures we used to cook up in the House of the Open Door?” she asked, turning to Katherine. “They were lots worse than lobster croquettes, if the plain truth were known. You wouldn’t worry at all, aunty, dear, if you knew what we used to eat at those spreads without damaging ourselves!”
Katherine was completely carried away by Veronica’s vivaciousness and temperamental whimsies. If she had admired the fiery little Hungarian in the days of the House of the Open Door, she was now absolutely enslaved by her. To plain, matter-of-fact Katherine, Veronica, with her artistic temperament, was a creature from another world, inspiring a certain amount of awed wonder, as well as admiring affection.
“What are you going to play at the concert to-night?” Katherine asked respectfully.
Veronica’s eyes began to glow, and she pushed aside her plate, leaving the second croquette to grow cold while she spoke animatedly upon the subject that lay ever nearest her heart.
“I’m going to play a cycle from Nágár, a Roumanian Gypsy composer,” she replied. “One of the pieces is the most wonderful thing; it’s called ‘The Whirlwind.’ It fairly carries you away with its rush and movement, until you want to fly, and shout, and go sailing away on the wings of the wind. Another one is named ‘Fata Morgana.’ You know that’s what people call the mirage that we can see out on the steppes—the open plains—of Hungary.”
“Yes?” murmured Katherine in a tone of eager interest. She loved to hear Veronica tell tales of her homeland.
“Many a time I have seen it,” continued Veronica, her eyes sparkling with a dreamy, far-off light, “a beautiful city standing out clear and fair against the horizon; and have gone forth to find it, only to see it vanish into the hot, quivering air, and to find myself lost out on the wide, lonely steppe.”
Katherine listened, fascinated, while Veronica told stories of the curious mirage that lured and mocked the dwellers on the lonely steppes of her native land, and so deep was her absorption that she absent-mindedly ate up Veronica’s croquette while she listened, to the infinite amusement of Mrs. Lehar.
“Aren’t you going to play any of your own compositions?” asked Katherine, when Veronica had finished talking about the Nágár cycle.
“Not as a regular number,” replied Veronica, taking up her fork to finish her croquette, and deciding that she must already have eaten it, since her plate was empty. “If, by any chance, I should be encored, I shall play a little piece of my own that I have named ‘Fire Dreams,’ and dedicated to the Winnebagos. I wrote it one night after a ceremonial meeting out in the woods where we danced around the fire and then sat down in a circle to watch it burn itself away to embers. We all told our dreams for the future that night, don’t you remember? I have woven everything together in my piece—the tall pines towering up to the sky; the stars peering through the branches; the wind fiddling through the leaves, and the river lapping on the stones below; with the firelight waving and flickering, and coaxing us to tell our dreams. I love to play it, because it brings back that scene so vividly; that and all the other beautiful times we had around the camp fire.”
Katherine gazed at Veronica in speechless admiration. With absolutely no musical ability herself, it seemed to her that anyone who could compose music was a child of the gods. Veronica smiled back frankly into Katherine’s admiring eyes, and gave her hand a fond squeeze.
“Now, tell me about Carver House and all the dear people there,” she said, settling herself comfortably in her chair and propping her elbows on the table. “We still have an hour to spare. Aunty won’t mind if we talk about our own affairs, will you, aunty? Now, Katherine, take a long breath and begin.”
The hour was up before Katherine was half way through telling the exciting things that had happened at Carver House in the past week, and with a sigh Veronica rose from the table and drew on her gloves.
“Come,” she said regretfully, “we’ll have to be starting. I have to go over to the hotel first and get my violin, and the auditorium where I am to play is some distance out.”
As they stepped from the tea-room into the street Katherine paused to buy Veronica a huge bunch of violets at a little stand just inside the entrance of the tall building next door. Not having enough money in her change-purse to pay for them, she took a roll of bills from a bill-fold in her inner pocket, and, taking five dollars from the roll, returned it to its place of safety in the lining of her coat. Lounging against the glass counter beside her was a slender, long-fingered man, whose gaze suddenly became concentrated when the roll of bills made its appearance. Katherine noticed his look of absorbed interest and a little thrill of uneasiness prickled along her spine. She looked sharply at this inquisitive stranger, fixing in her mind the details of his appearance. He wore a long, light-colored overcoat and a visor cap pulled down over his eyes, which were small and dark, and set close together in his thin, sallow face, giving him a peculiar, ratlike expression. Katherine buttoned her coat carefully over the bill-fold and hastily rejoined Veronica and Mrs. Lehar in the street outside, conscious that the man’s eyes were still upon her and that he had followed her out of the shop. To her relief, Mrs. Lehar hailed a taxicab, and in a moment more they were being whirled rapidly away from the scene.
An hour later Katherine found herself sitting in state in one of the front boxes of a crowded auditorium, impatiently waiting for the soprano soloist to finish a lengthy operatic aria and yield her place to Veronica. The soloist bowed her way out at last, and Veronica, looking like a very slender little child in contrast to the massive singer, tripped out on the stage with her violin under her arm, just as she had always carried it around in the House of the Open Door.
“She isn’t a bit scared!” was Katherine’s admiring thought.
Nodding brightly to the audience, Veronica laid her bow across the strings with that odd little caressing gesture that Katherine remembered so well, and began to play her long cycle from memory.
Strange images flitted through Katherine’s brain as she listened; the lighted stage faded from sight, and in its place there stretched a wide, grassy plain, shimmering in the sunlight and flecked with racing cloud shadows, far ahead, gleaming clear against the gray-blue horizon, rose the white towers and spires of a fair city, which seemed to call to her in friendly invitation, awakening in her an irresistible longing to travel toward it and behold its wonders at near hand. But ever as she approached it receded into the distance, vanishing at last in the twinkling of an eye, and leaving her alone in the heart of a wild, desolate moor upon which darkness was swiftly falling. She started in affright at the long, eerie cry of a nightbird; the deepening shadows were filled with fearful, unnamable terrors. Her head reeled; the strength went out from her limbs, and with icy hands pressed tightly over her eyes to shut out the menacing shadow-shapes, she sank shuddering to the ground. She was roused by the sound of thunder, and opening her eyes found the lonely moor vanished, and in its place the brightly lighted stage, while the thunder which echoed in her ears resolved itself into a tumult of hand-clapping.
Katherine rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. “What was that piece she just played?” she asked in a whisper.
“That was the ‘Fata Morgana,’” replied Mrs. Lehar.
It was several minutes after ten o’clock when Veronica finished her last encore, and Katherine, glancing at her watch, hastily reached for her coat, and leaving a goodnight message for Veronica with Mrs. Lehar, started from the auditorium.
The curious spell of the “Fata Morgana” descended upon Katherine again as she emerged from the concert hall and made her way through a poorly lighted side street toward the main avenue where the street cars passed. The long, waving shadows seemed to clutch at her ankles as she walked; strange noises sounded in her ears; the trees that bordered the curb left their places and began to move toward her with a grotesque, circling motion, while the distant glare of light toward which she was traveling began to recede until it was a mere twinkling speck, miles away in the distance. Again her strength forsook her, and with violently trembling hands she grasped an iron fence railing and clung desperately to keep herself from falling. The touch of the cold metal sent a little shock tingling through her; she braced herself and looked steadily at the spectres crowding about her. The trees had gone back into their places; the shadows no longer seemed to be crouching ready to spring at her.