CHAPTER XXLOOKING FORWARD
Devoted attention to every line contained in the little package of letters failed to develop information which appeared to be of interest to Katherine Moore or any one else.
Carefully each line was read by Mr. Hammond and the Girl Scouts on the afternoon of their discovery. Later the letters were given to Dr. McClain and to Mr. Hale, Margaret Hale’s father, who was a prominent lawyer, for an equally painstaking perusal. They agreed that they were merely a trivial collection such as any one might receive from a dozen friends, preserved for the sake of the affection, not the value of the communications.
There were no papers save the letters.
Only one or two seemingly unimportant details connected the letters in any possible fashion with Katherine Moore. Three of them were signed with the initials O. M., which may or may not have had any association with the name Moore. In point of fact,it would have appeared a straining of the imagination, save that the name Moore was signed to one short note.
In any case, it was agreed that, since there was no one else to claim them, the little package might be consigned to the girl who was discovered as a baby in the forsaken cabin. No one had been known to be living there at the time, so there was no reason to believe otherwise than that the baby had been carried there and immediately abandoned.
As Dr. McClain was at present seeing Kara daily at the Gray House, the letters were given to him for safe delivery. Not until twenty-four hours after was Tory Drew permitted to call and find what the influence and effect of so unsatisfying a communication had been.
She found Kara in the big room downstairs which had been given over to her use since her accident whenever she was living at the Gray House.
When Tory entered the room Kara must have been re-reading the letters, since they lay open upon her lap.
“You were not disappointed over our discovery, dear? The letters do mean something to you? You have the faith to believe that something important toyouwill develop from them some day? I believe it if you do.”
Kara laughed.
“Beloved Tory, if with all your imagination and sense of romance you could find nothing of value in the old letters why expect it of a practical, matter-of-fact, stupid person like I am? The letters are ridiculous to my mind so far as they are supposed to have any reference to me.”
Still the gray eyes were shining and to-day Tory beheld the half quizzical lines about the lips that belonged to the Kara of other days.
“But if you have no faith in the letters, why do you seem so much happier and like your old self?” she queried.
Her companion hesitated.
“Hasn’t Dr. McClain told you?”
“He has told me nothing save that I might come to see you if I would not stay too long, which is the permission he gives to all our Girl Scouts.”
Kara’s voice was steady with the old-time gentle drawl.
“Promise me then not to expect too much or be too disappointed if things do not turn out altogether well? Of course I am happier to-day, happier than a dozen letters proclaiming me an heiress could ever make me.
“Dr. McClain and two other surgeons whohave seen me believe there is a possibility I may be well. They are not absolutely sure. Don’t look so queer, Tory.”
“I don’t look queer, go on,” the other girl whispered, bending her face down so that her lips touched Kara’s hair and her face could not be seen.
“There isn’t anything else to tell, except that I am to go to New York City to be treated and to spend the winter and that Mr. Fenton and Mr. Hammond and Dr. McClain and several other people have made the arrangements and will pay all my expenses.”
Here for the first time Kara’s voice trembled.
“Who says one cannot have beautiful things happen to one even if lost letters do prove disappointing?”
She put out her hand and caught hold of her companion’s.
“Tory, you don’t think I have failed to appreciate your loveliness to me this summer. All the time when I have appeared most ungrateful I have cared most. I won’t talk about it now, only as you are an artist you understand better than I how one may see things in a wrong perspective. My view is clearer now whatever happens.”
Tory kneeled down:
“I wish I might be Ruth to your Naomi.”
CHAPTER XXIKARA’S DEPARTURE
Believing that it would do his patient no possible injury, Dr. McClain agreed that Kara should see as many of her friends as she desired upon the last few days before departing for New York City.
Every spare hour Kara and Tory were together. The last few days Miss Victoria Fenton had asked Kara to stay with them at their home in the village. Farewell could be more easily said from there than at the Gray House on the edge of the town. There would be less difficulty in finally getting away.
Dr. McClain was to accompany Kara to New York in order to see the New York physicians. Mr. Jeremy Hammond had offered to motor them down, as he owned a handsome car and Kara would be spared having to be lifted in and out of the train.
Kara’s farewell Scout meeting was by her own request a quiet one. No one would be present save the Scout Captain and her own Patrol. There was only one other personwho would come for half an hour to say good-by, Memory Frean.
Fortunately the Fenton house had a bedroom on the first floor, so that Kara could be comfortable without the problem of the stairs.
One admirer Kara had acquired without realizing the fact. She was to make the discovery on the afternoon that she and Miss Victoria Fenton sat talking, waiting for Tory to announce that preparations were ready for tea.
From the beginning of Tory’s first acquaintance with Katharine Moore, Miss Fenton had been quietly watching the other girl. She had liked Kara’s fashion of never referring to the difference between her own life and that of her more fortunate friends. When it was natural to mention the orphan asylum, where she made her home, always she spoke of the place with affection, never criticism or resentment.
Knowing nothing of her parentage, Miss Victoria concluded for reasons of her own that Kara had come of well-bred people. And she meant more than ordinary breeding. She was under the impression that Kara revealed rare tact and sweetness in a difficult situation. Now and then she considered that her attitudebore a quality of high courage. But not until after Kara’s accident was Miss Fenton convinced that courage was the characteristic that lay behind her other attributes.
In the twenty-four hours the young girl had been her guest with the prospect of such a test of patience and fortitude before her, Miss Victoria had surrendered completely.
Silently Tory Drew had been aware of Miss Victoria’s state of mind. She had observed a new tenderness in the older woman’s manner and voice whenever she spoke or looked at her guest that she never had seen her display.
This afternoon on the day before Kara’s departure, when Miss Victoria entered Kara’s bedroom, with a hurried excuse Tory withdrew.
Kara, who was lying on a couch in a dark corner of the square old room, struggled to sit up as the older woman entered.
With hands that were large and kind the older woman pushed her gently back upon the pile of soft cushions.
Then, untying a parcel and flushing as if she were embarrassed, Miss Victoria laid a dressing gown over the reclining figure.
The gown was a beautiful one, with nothing of the plainness or severity one might haveimagined Miss Victoria would choose. It was of blue silk, the shade known as old blue, indescribably deep and soft in tone. The lining was of pale gray. A little hood hung at the back and a cord was knotted about the waist.
Kara might wear it for a number of occasions. She could receive guests in it, as it would doubtless be difficult for her at all times to be formally dressed.
Kara’s voice shook a little as she touched the silk with one hand and caught Miss Victoria’s hand with the other.
“Everybody is being too good to me. I wonder if it is going to make it harder or easier for me this winter. I shall miss my friends the more and at the same time want to show them how deeply I appreciate what is being done. May I write to you now and then, Miss Victoria?”
Miss Fenton showed and expressed pleasure, although she had written her niece only a single letter in more than a month’s absence from the village.
“I have something else for you, Kara, something I want you to prize, not because of its great value but because it means a great deal to me.
“It was given me by the bravest person I have known. I will not tell you about him now. Perhaps I will some day. If ever life seems to be too difficult for you, my dear, you must tell me and then perhaps my story may help you find new courage. Please don’t speak of this to any one except to say I wished to give you the little pin as a parting gift.”
As Tory softly turned the handle of the door to come back into the room and announce the Girl Scouts, she observed Miss Fenton stoop and pin at Kara’s throat a small pin. As she came nearer she saw that it was a beautiful sapphire set in an old-fashioned band of gold. In truth, the pin was handsomer than either girl appreciated.
A moment later, before Kara could thank her properly, the older woman hurried away, insisting she had a household duty to look after.
The Girl Scouts had been warned.
Kara’s farewell to her Patrol must be as casual and matter-of-fact as possible. There must be no heroics at parting; she would leave in the early morning and must reserve all her strength.
At shortly after five o’clock the girls and the Troop Captain had departed and Kara wasagain lying down alone until the evening meal.
Afterwards Dr. McClain and Dorothy were to come in for a few moments.
Kara and Tory, Miss Victoria and Mr. Richard Fenton were in the drawing-room when they entered. Unexpectedly Lance accompanied them.
“We did not intend allowing Lance to appear, Kara,” Dorothy apologized, “but he insisted he had something of special importance to say to you and never had been allowed the opportunity, you have been so surrounded.”
Not long after, stating that he was satisfied with her condition, Dr. McClain departed to call upon another patient. A few minutes later Miss Victoria and Mr. Fenton left the drawing-room to the younger guests.
Kara was in her wheeled chair. Lance was standing near her. Dorothy was seated on a stool nearby, while Tory remained on the rug with her back to the fire, facing the others.
Dorothy smiled.
“Do you remember, Kara? Tory is wearing a green dress to-night as upon the occasion of our first visit to this drawing-room to ask her to become a Girl Scout. Dear me, what is that commotion?”
The two girls ran over toward the window. Lance had the thoughtfulness to wheel Kara’s chair so that she might equally gratify her curiosity.
Tory had drawn up the curtain and the four of them could see a small group of figures standing in the street beneath the drawing-room window.
There was a light coating of snow on the sidewalk.
“What in the world is the matter?” Dorothy asked anxiously. “Isn’t Don one of the boys down there? I wonder what they intend?”
Lance made an odd grimace.
“Intend? Good gracious! I always felt Don had no sense of humor, but this is worse than I feared.
“Don’t you girls appreciate the fact this is to be a farewell serenade for Kara? Yet Don has read ‘Seventeen’! They are half a dozen of the Boy Scout Band.”
“It is very kind of them, I am sure; no reason for you to be so superior, Lance,” Tory answered.
Outside the musicians were beginning the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” and the little crowd inside the room were silent, Tory thrusting the girl for whom the honor wasintended into the most conspicuous position and a moment later wrapping a blue scarf about her thin shoulders.
With their heads close together they listened and watched.
“What are we to do when they have finished, Tory, to show our appreciation?” Kara whispered. “I am afraid Dr. McClain would not be willing to have me see them. Shall I go to my room while you receive them?”
“No,” Tory shook her head, glancing about the room. On a center table was a bowl of red roses, the flowers Mr. Fenton cared for most, that he had brought as a farewell offering to Kara.
Tory gathered half a dozen in her hands.
“Throw these out and wave good-night,” she murmured.
Kara was not able to reach so far and seemed shy at making the attempt, so that the other girl threw the roses and saw them fall, crimson spots of color on the white snow.
Don picked one up and waved it, lifting his hat. The other boys followed his example.
“Good-night, good-by, Kara,” they called.
Donald’s last glance and good-by was for Tory Drew.
As they closed the window and reluctantlyturned away, Dorothy McClain wore an unusual expression. She was frowning and biting her lips, her color warmer than usual.
“Do you know, Tory, I believe Don is growing to be as fond of you as of me.”
She slipped her arm through Lance’s and held it close.
Lance gave her a reassuring glance.
Tory laughed.
“Never in a thousand years! But if Lance really wants to speak to Kara, perhaps he would rather we give him the opportunity alone.
“Suppose you come over here and sit on the sofa beside me. You must be specially good to me when Kara is away.”
Seldom was Lance awkward in manner or apparently at a loss for words. Now he appeared embarrassed and silent.
“No, please don’t go away, Tory, you and Dot, not if you can bear remaining. And you must, to brace up Kara. The truth is I had nothing special to say to her, but the other afternoon I composed a little piece of music in her honor as a farewell. I am wiser to-night and she shall not be afflicted with it.”
Again Lance’s brown eyes were slightly sarcastic, slightly challenging.
“How can you care for my poor efforts after the serenade?”
Tory made no answer save to attempt to lift the cover from the piano, so that Lance was compelled to come to her assistance.
“Sit down, Lance,” she ordered quietly, attempting to place the stool in position. “I am glad to say the old piano was tuned only a few days ago, although no one here uses it. You know you want to play what you have written for Kara, so why pretend otherwise?”
Tory’s manner left no chance for argument, so Lance, with a whimsical smile of agreement, meekly obeyed.
He sat under a light from a reading lamp, the two girls standing beside Kara’s chair.
“My musical composition has the advantage of not being long and is merely an attempt to express our sorrow over Kara’s departure, our faith in her good courage and our splendid hope for her return. Yes, and perhaps a little of my envy that she goes to the city of my dreams. Perhaps after all I shall meet her there.”
Lance’s words trailed away into silence as his slender fingers touched the keys in a simple melody of farewell.