IVThe next day was harsh and cloudy. There was a light fog in from the sea, enough to make it a little cold, and to depress my spirits. It was, therefore, with great impatience that I awaited the matutinal visit from my hostess. She was usually up betimes; to-day she slept late.It had already become one of my chief diversions to listen for the little morning colloquy in the hall, but to-day I heard nothing till after eight o'clock, when Leah came upstairs, knocked on the opposite door, which was always half-open at night, and put her usual question.Miss Fielding's voice came sharp and clear, a little querulous."Oh, I'll have bacon and eggs, I think; but wait a while, Leah; I'm sleepy and I don't want to get up yet."Leah closed my own door softly and went down-stairs. I was disappointed. I hoped Miss Fielding was not in a bad humor, though that seemed impossible. When Leah came up with the tray and gave me a "good morning," I said:"Leah, I wish you'd ask Miss Fielding if Nokomis can't come up into my room this morning, will you?"She hesitated just long enough for me to notice that she was troubled; then she put down the tray, saying:"Nokomis is a queer old dog, Mr. Castle, and I don't know that she'll come.""Why, she was here all day yesterday and we had a beautiful time together!""I know." Leah turned to leave. "I'll speak about it, of course, but—well, these dogs have all sorts of fancies, and you can't always depend upon them. They will and they won't." She did not look at me as she answered, and went out immediately.I felt that I had somehow blundered into an indiscretion, though what it was I couldn't possibly see. It made me exceedingly uncomfortable, for I would have done anything rather than take advantage of the kindness and hospitality with which I had been treated. I remembered that I had not yet heard the dogs barking; that might possibly mean something, but it gave me no clue. I had to give it up and try to make amends as well as I might.A little later I heard Miss Fielding's door slam, and her footsteps running down the stairs. That she had not come in to see me, even if for only a few words, did not decrease my annoyance. Shortly after came a chorus of barks, but I fancied that they were not of the same mood that I had noted before; there seemed to be something antagonistic in their protesting notes, as if some stranger had perhaps passed the house. I had got the idea that Midmeadows was a lonely place, though I had not yet seen the outside of the building, and no doubt the collies were distrustful of visitors. I waited expectantly to hear Miss Fielding call them, one by one, as she had before; but, if she did so, I missed it.For half an hour or more there was a steady pounding down-stairs, and, when Leah came for my tray, I heard some one whistling, the least bit out of tune. Leah was silent and reserved. She asked how I had slept, and if I were better, and there the conversation ended.Finally, at about eleven o'clock, Miss Fielding came in. I looked up eagerly.She wore a stiffly laundered shirt-waist, noticeably stained and soiled, though it had evidently been put on clean that morning. She wore no stock, and the neck was turned away in a V, carelessly, showing a little gold chain with a sapphire pendant, and the sleeves were rolled up above her dimpled elbows. She had a heavy walking-skirt and heavy mannish shoes whose soles projected a full half-inch beyond the uppers. Her hair, which, before, I had always seen exquisitely coiled high on her head, was done in a full pompadour, though now it fell in flat folds over her forehead and wisped out in the back of her neck.She came up to my bedside and smiled frankly at me. I got a pronounced odor of Santal."Well, how are you to-day?" she said jovially. "Do you feel better?"I said that I did, noticing that she wore three rings on her left hand. It was good to see her so full of life and energy."You certainly were a sight when you were brought in," she went on; "I was frightened to death. I never saw any one unconscious before, and I thought you were dead, for sure. Isn't it lucky the doctor was here? I'm awfully sorry your auto was smashed up so, for I'd like to try it myself. I've been wanting one. Yours is a foreign make, isn't it? I've been looking it over. It's a water-cooled engine, I see. But I want a six-cylinder. I'm going to see if Uncle Jerdon and I can't patch it up so that it'll go.""Fancy a girl's caring about machinery!" I said, smiling at her enthusiasm. "You're the last person in the world I'd ever think would have any interest in it.""Why?" she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, and, turning down her sleeves, covered her round, strong arms."I thought that you were more of the artistic temperament.""Oh, I like to use my hands," she said. She held one out, its fingers stiffly opened, then clenched her fist firmly. "They're stronger than they look. Try it!"She took my hand in hers and gave me a grip as strong as any ordinary man's."That comes from your violin practice, I suppose," I remarked.Her eyes were on mine, and I saw that the pupils were dilated, and the irises so dark as almost to appear black. She did not answer me for a moment, and then simply nodded vaguely and changed the subject."I've taken the clock apart more than once. The dining-room one, I mean. When the hands point to eight, it strikes four and it's half-past two, really. I have to tell time by an algebraic formula. I'm going to dissect it again and see if I can't get it right." She laughed merrily, swinging her foot back and forth.At that moment the collies began to bark again. She sprang up impatiently, and went to the window."Darn those dogs!" she complained, "don't they make a horrid racket, though! I can't keep them quiet." Then she raised the sash abruptly, leaned out and cried, "Hush up, there!"Their answer was a chorus of indignation. She let down the window with a clatter, and walked to the mirror to rearrange her hair, using silver pins that shone conspicuously in her dark locks. Her skirt had sagged away from her belt, at the back, from the violence of her work, no doubt, and she reached to fix it, turning to smile at me coquettishly after she did so."Do you like my hair done high or low?" she asked."I like it best the way I first saw it, that night," I said. "It was done in a fillet, or a bandeau, wasn't it?""Why, no! It was pompadoured, wasn't it? Oh, yes—perhaps it was—I forget—but it's so fine that I can't do anything with it."Except for these little lapses of abstraction when she stared so puzzlingly at me, she was in high spirits. Her presence filled the room with electricity; she surcharged its atmosphere. She seemed more virile than ever, more full of life, so full that it actually seemed to splash over in all sorts of energetic gestures of her head and hands. As she stood, now, in the center of the room, she made a quick dash at a fly that drifted past, caught it in her hand, smiled at her dexterity, and tossed it aside. She made passes and rapid motions with her arms, as if she were swinging a tennis racket, and tapped her toes and heels in a little clog-dance as she walked. I saw that she was getting bored."Well," she said at last, "I must go to work. If there's anything you want Leah will do it for you. You can call her. There's the bell. Don't hesitate to ring it. I'll be so glad when you can come down-stairs and see the place. It's a jolly old shack—you'll like it!"She waved her hand jauntily and swung out of the room. I heard her run downstairs, and a little later the pounding and the whistling recommenced.She semed different to-day, but I imagined that perhaps it was only that she was feeling better in health and mind, though she had not appeared really ill before. She seemed younger than ever, too, the little lines in her face seemed to be mostly ironed out. No doubt it was, as women say, "her day." Her beauty was more obvious; it was undeniable.Yet something about her manner troubled me. I was distinctly disappointed; she seemed less subtle, less imaginative. She was no longer the princess of my fairy tale; the spell had waned. But if her familiarity and naturalness upon further acquaintance were less romantic, they were more real, and had some of the actuality of prose. We could still be good friends, for I liked her immensely. Perhaps she had thought we had gone too far sentimentally, and was trying to put our relations upon a firmer and more matter-of-fact basis. Perhaps, even, Doctor Copin's visit had, in some way, affected her, and she had considered that herententewith me was becoming dangerous. Well, it was certainly my place, as a stranger thrust upon her hospitality, to take whatever cue she gave me, disappointing as that line of conduct should prove. For I had been stirred and awakened by her. I could not deny that to myself. And no doubt I had taken her altogether too seriously.I saw no more of her till late in the afternoon, but, meanwhile, Leah made me a welcome visit. After luncheon she asked me, quite modestly, if I would like her to read to me or would rather play chess. I chose the reading, wanting very much the opportunity of studying her. Her attention seemed, however, to be distracted; I was sure of it when, a little later, she excused herself to go downstairs. Then I noticed the barking of the dogs, high-pitched and excited.She came back soon to finish her reading, and, that done, we fell to talking. As she sat, her dark face was outlined against the white woodwork of the alcove like a silhouette. Her white teeth shone.I asked her about her education."I went to a school for colored women," she said, "fitting myself to be a teacher. But of course it's hard for a colored girl to get a chance, except with her own race, and I didn't want to go South. Then I got this place with Miss Fielding.""I can't imagine any situation more delightful," I said, watching her.Her eyes burned, smothered in quickening tears, but her voice was calm enough. "It's lovely here. I don't mind the loneliness a bit. It's nothing to what I have endured in big cities."She gave it to me simply, with no apparent bid for sympathy, but I knew enough of the pathetic isolation of the educated negro, cut off from any real mental communion with the blacks as well as with the whites, to interpret the repression of her manner. There was a tragedy in her words."Well," I said, "it strikes me that you're in luck to be here with such a companion as Miss Fielding. And she's as fortunate, too. I'm sure you get on beautifully. Still, how she can stand it, away off from every one, I don't see quite so well.""Do you think she's—unhappy!" Leah asked after a pause."Certainly not to-day, at least. Yesterday I shouldn't have been quite so sure that she wasn't.""Oh, she has her moods," Leah admitted. "I do my best to indulge them." She looked up at me. "So must you, too, Mr. Castle!" She held my eyes deliberately, as if expecting my promise."How could I be so ungrateful as not to, in the circumstances?""I mean—you see, she doesn't like to be questioned. I have to be very careful. She has her fancies, and often seems inconsistent, even a bit eccentric. It may be her life here alone. You know she sees so few people. You won't notice it?" Still her eyes appealed to me."I shan't at least show that I do."She seemed dissatisfied."Except, perhaps, to you," I added, trying, as I had tried with Miss Fielding, to get to the bottom of her dread."Oh, not to me," she begged. "She's too fine for us to be discussing. I've said too much already, I'm afraid. I don't know why I did. Only——"I said it for her. "Only, I am quartered on you, here, and you can't get rid of me. You have, in a way, a spy in camp. By an accident, I'm here, and you're at my mercy. Isn't that it? You don't, I mean, quite know what I am, and you'd like to be able to trust me, whatever happens." It was a jump in the dark for me.I could see her fingers working; she had clasped her hands."Oh, I hope I haven't given you the idea that anything is likely to happen," she said anxiously. "If I have, I'm quite sorry I spoke. If you'll only take everything quite as a matter of course—that's all I mean—her moods, you know, and not think things—" She ended without attempting to be more lucid, for there was a sound of some one coming up-stairs.Miss Fielding came into the room, and her delicate right eyebrow rose at seeing Leah sitting there, doing nothing."Leah, go down and tie up the dogs; they're chasing all over the place!" Her voice was crisp and peremptory.Leah went away quietly; I got a swift glance of mute appeal at me as she left. Miss Fielding came to my side and looked down at me quizzically, her thumbs in her belt."Do you mind telling me your name?" she said. "It's rather awkward not to know, you know.""Oh, Castle's my real name, right enough," I answered."Castle?" she repeated, and then, as if recollecting: "Of course, but I meant your first name." Her face cleared."Chester Castle," I enlarged. "A good name for an architect, isn't it?""An architect, really? Then I'll have to get you to help me on my little house. But you're too good-looking for an architect," she laughed. "I thought they always wore pointed beards, like doctors.""Oh, I'm not a Beaux-Arts man," I said, keeping up with her mood."Are you married?""No, I'm happy to say I'm not.""So am I!" she laughed. "That is to say, I'm gladI'mnot, and I'm glad you're not. My name is Joy. Isn't it silly? It doesn't fit me at all. I ought to have been called Edna.""Very well, then, you shall be!" I volunteered.She took it without surprise or annoyance. "Oh, I don't stand on ceremony. That's silly. If you're going to stay here for a week I shall have to call you Chester. Do you mind? It's an awful bore to have to say 'Mr. Castle' all the time.""By all means. My mother and my friends call me 'Chet'—""That's better still. Chet." She tried it audibly. "I rather like that.""You're welcome to it." I laughed at her directness."But you haven't asked me any questions! I should think you'd be curious. Really, it isn't at all complimentary to have you so indifferent.""Oh, I'm only keeping 'on the island'," I returned."Keeping—what?""Don't you remember—about staying 'on the island'? You know you asked me yourself to.""Oh, yes—did I? I forget." The puzzled look on her face had appeared again, but was driven away. "Well, there really isn't much to know about me. It's stupid enough here at Midmeadows. It's my own place, you know. It used to belong to my grandfather. I've had it ever since he died. I suppose it's good for me here, for I'm ill a good part of the time. I'm up and I'm down. But when I'm up, I'm up pretty high, and when I'm down, I'm 'way down in the depths."She had sat down in a chair and had crossed her legs, one over the other, wagging one foot and clasping her hands across her knees so tightly that the blood was driven from her white knuckles to the ends of her purple fingers. It is always an awkward pose; I have often wondered how a pretty girl could ever take it. Now she drew her chair closer to the bedside and took my hand."Let me see your hand," she said suddenly. "I'll read your palm, if you like."She bent over it, drawing so near that her head was quite close to mine, so close that, had it not been for the perfume she used, I should have got the odor of her hair. When she turned to me, smiling, she seemed very near indeed, though none too near me. She began her reading of the lines, holding my hand in both hers, pointing to the signs with one finger, trying the resistance of my thumb, squeezing the flesh to determine its firmness, kneading it and handling it in quite the professional manner. It took her some time. The opinions she gave me were not particularly affording, but they were rather cleverly put. She made a good deal of my "magnetism," saying that she could actually feel it. I was properly flattered. I could feel hers, easily enough.Then she dropped my hand, rose and yawned as freely as had Nokomis herself."I'm starving!" she exclaimed. "I must see what's the matter with dinner. I'm sorry you can't come down, Chet. I hate to eat all alone.""Why, doesn't Leah eat with you?" I asked, surprised."No, I can't quite gothat!" she said emphatically, as she made an irrelevant athletic gesture. "I have to draw the line somewhere, you know. I have Uncle Jerdon sometimes, though, just for the fun of seeing him eat. He's perfectly lovely! He holds his fork in the Kansas City style, this way—" She illustrated a familiar restaurant attitude, with the thumb and little finger of her left hand braced under a paper-knife, the three middle fingers curled atop. "Then he always loads up his fork with his knife, a little piece of meat, and a little piece of potato, and a little dab of butter and a little swish of gravy and then—" She showed me how, pretending to toss it into her mouth, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, in a way that made me laugh aloud. "You could hear him eat, 'way up here! Golly! it makes me hungry to talk about it!" she added. "I'll see you later, Chet. Oh—I'll send you up some current jelly. I made it myself; sure cure for the measles! Remember, you have to like it!" And she was off in a two-step.I smiled to myself at her pantomime, after she was gone. How I had misjudged her at first! She seemed commoner, but our friendship was, perhaps, more natural. She was no longer the wonderful, exotic, medieval princess in the tower, but she was a frank, wholesome creature, full of human charms and faults. I decided, by reason of that sane analysis, that I was improving in health. My bang on the head, no doubt, had made me unduly impressionable.She did not keep her word in regard to coming in after dinner. Leah brought up my tray, as usual, and took it away, saying that she was unable to stay with me. She seemed abstracted and nervous, and I forbore to question her. I spent a dreary evening alone.The pounding went on for two hours or more after dinner, and then Miss Fielding came up-stairs to her room. She contented herself with putting her head through the doorway and calling out "Good night, Chet!" and then I heard her door slam. There was no talk between the two women that I could hear.V"Sliced kisses, fried in tears," were the words I heard Miss Fielding reply to Leah's morning call, early the next day. I had waited long, for the day was bright and I wakened at sunrise. Her fanciful order put one immediately into a good humor, and I was intensely curious to see what the day would bring forth.The collies were barking vociferously, joyously. Suddenly they stopped, and then, one by one, I heard them greet their mistress. It was very prettily done. Leah, coming in, found me smiling, and smiled back at me. Seeing me so much better, she offered timidly to help dress me, and I welcomed her proposal to bring me hot water and what was necessary for shaving. My own clothes had been sent down, so I prepared myself for my chatelaine's visit.Joy came into my room with a sweet, low, "Good morning, Mr. Castle!" which threw me back not a little, after what had taken place on the yesterday. I was about to hazard some good-natured sarcasm, but the sight of her face inhibited it, and something of what Leah had said came back to me. I answered the greeting without comment, therefore, and waited for her to set the pace.She was in an exquisitely fresh, simple organdy frock, and had on a garden hat and gauntleted garden gloves; her arms were filled with roses. Her brow wrinkled slightly as she noticed the fading blossoms which had been left in the vases."I'm afraid I neglected you yesterday," she said, as she set about removing the dejected roses and putting fresh ones in their places. As she came near me, I noticed little dewy drops on her neatly coiled hair, where she had dashed it with violet water. There was no trace of any other scent, save that of the roses. She drew off her gloves and I saw that she wore no rings.She sat down for a moment. I had observed before that not only could Miss Fielding be remarkably graceful in pose and in action, but that she could be as astonishinglygaucheas well. Astonishingly, that is, for her—for one whocouldbe so graceful. This, however, was decidedly one of her graceful days, or rather, perhaps, as Leah had said, moods. Her lines melted and composed. There was positive elegance in the way she used her hands, gesticulating freely. It enhanced the charm of her voice, so limpid and full of feeling."Isn't it a beautiful morning! What a shame it is that you can't get up. You must hurry and convalesce—just enough to be able to see the place, and not so much as to have to go away. Perhaps you can get into a chair by to-morrow. Did you hear my doggies? I can recognize each of them by the voice, and you will be able to, too, if you only stay here long enough. Nokomis is the deepest-toned one. She's the oldest, you know, and the most dignified. Hiawatha is the little yappy one. He's a very silly little pup!""I'm sorry Nokomis didn't want to come up to see me, yesterday," I said. "But I hope you'll pardon my taking the liberty of asking for her. I know you probably don't often allow them in the house.""Why, ofcourseNokomis can come up; the idea! She'd love it. Would you like to see her now?" Then, with her eyes on mine, and noticing my bewildered look, no doubt, she added, with a queer expression, "Nokomis wasn't quite well yesterday. She is getting old, you know." She rose restlessly. "Will you wait a moment, please? I want to speak to Leah," and she went out.Something had passed over her spirits, I couldn't tell what. It was like the shadow of a cloud sweeping rapidly across a sunny hillside. Whatever it was, it was gone when she returned.She went directly to the window, threw up the sash, and called down, "Nokomis! Hi, Nokomis!" A bark responded."Come up here, old lady! Yes, come right up. Wipe your feet, please. Wipe yourfeet, Nokomis!"The next thing there was a pattering of feet upon the stairs, and the bitch bounded into the room, her tail wagging. She ran up to Miss Fielding immediately for orders."Go and say 'How d'you do?' to Mr. Castle, Nokomis," said Miss Fielding, pointing at me.Nokomis dropped to the floor again, and with the dignity of a duchess walked over to where I lay, raised her beautiful eyes to mine, lifted a forepaw and laid it on the bed. I shook it and felt for the dog's neck."Now, Nokomis—" Miss Fielding began.She was down on the instant, went to her mistress and stood waiting, her head on one side, her ears half erect, her tail low."Go and bring up Chevalier, please," was the command. Nokomis was off like an arrow, and presently there was a to-do in the yard. By this time I could recognize Nokomis' heavy note among the others. Then she and a tan-and-black collie came rollicking into the room. Both came immediately up to their mistress."Here's Chevalier, Mr. Castle. He's a pretty good show dog, isn't he? He hasn't got a fancy livery, but he's all right, except his tail's set on a bit too high, and there's a little feather to his hind legs below the hock."Chevalier whined, and looked up at Miss Fielding. I was quite ready to believe the dog understood what she said."Oh, that's all right, Chev, you's a booful, good doggie, and I love you! Chevalier's strain harks back to the original Scott—he's quite a swell, in his way, and has got blue ribbons. But they all want tri-colored calico dogs, now. Go over and pay your respects, Chevalier, please!"The dog came up to me, was patted, and left with Nokomis, who was next instructed to return with John O'Groat, a big dog, almost wholly black, with a rather blunter muzzle than the others."John's got pretty good blood, too, and his mother was from the Lothian Hills, like Norval—no, that was the Grampians. A little hollow-backed, and his forelegs aren't quite straight, but Jack's a good dog, aren't you, Jack? A fine worker, too."Jack was certainly listening to every word attentively, whether he understood or not. After he had gone, Nokomis brought up Minnehaha, one of her own youngsters, pure white."Poor little Minnie," said Miss Fielding, "she's got yellow eyes and a thin coat, but I love her just as much!" Taking the forepaws she held her own face tantalizingly near the dog's tongue. "Just as much, I do. Now go over to Mr. Castle, Miss!"Last of all came Hiawatha, a frenzied, wriggling, capering puppy, sable-and-white like his mother, yelping, crouching, bounding, hysterical with joy. Miss Fielding and I fell to laughing at his antics, but Hiawatha was too young to care. He was up on top of my bed in half a minute, and stifling me with his eagerness, lapping my face and hands, growling, snarling, biting, scratching all at once. When this frisky, capering bunch of enthusiasm had departed, quite out of his head with the excitement of the visit, Miss Fielding talked dog for ten minutes. She had not forgotten, however, to compliment her pets with a lump of sugar apiece, filched from my tray and dropped from the window with strict precedence."Oh," I said, looking at her with admiration, "I do think your own name is the best! It's so like you.""What d'you mean?" she asked, coming up to me."Why—Joy," I replied."Of course it is! Isn't it fun to have a name like that? One has quite to live up to it, though. It inspires me, sometimes, when I'm blue.""Yes; it has distinction. I don't see why you ever should prefer Edna.""Oh, Edna—" she said seriously. She waited a moment, to shake from her skirt the sand the dogs' paws had left. "Well, I do like Edna, sometimes. It depends upon my mood, I suppose. You know I told you I had moods. Don't try to reconcile me, I know I'm inconsistent. But I'm a woman," she added, looking up more brightly, "and I suppose I have that right.""I haven't decided whether you're a woman or not," I returned. "Sometimes I have thought you were a princess in disguise.""Oh, that's nice of you! But why?""You're so mysterious, so whimsical, so detached, so romantic.""Take care!" she warned severely. "You aren't trying to swim off the island, are you?"I opened my eyes at this."You still hold me to my promise—after yesterday?""Why not?" she said, a little blankly."Why, I thought we were well off the island—at leastyouwere. I thought that you had given up the game.""Why?" she asked, looking at me directly, in seeming surprise. "I think you must have mistaken my meaning."I couldn't quite get it. "You asked me all sorts of questions, anyway, you know," I ventured.Her eyes begged for mercy. "I'm sorry if I was impertinent——""Oh, I don't mean that, of course. You couldn't be. You had a perfect right to ask, of course.""Can't I row back in a boat, please?" she pouted whimsically. "Don't give it up yet. Not till I give you specific leave of absence. I suppose I'm spoiled. I want my cake to keep and eat, too."I was a little relieved at her recognition of her own inconsistency, though I felt a queer hiatus somewhere. It was as if, mentally, I had tried to go up a step where there was none. But I let the subject drop. She took up the books on the stand and began to look them over."Don't you think Leah reads beautifully?" she asked."It's charming to hear her, but; if you don't mind, I prefer to hear you."She took all my compliments so graciously, without either embarrassed denial or vanity, that I loved to watch her when I tried a gallantry. Now she only nodded to me, sweepingly, with mock deference, and went on:"Leah and I disagree somewhat. I have more manner, perhaps, and less rhythm. We read a good deal together. I think she sees Browning much more clearly than I. Perhaps I feel him more keenly.""She's a remarkable girl—I was going to add 'for a negress,' but I needn't qualify it.""Oh, no! You don'tknowhow fine she is." Seating herself she added, as if to herself, in a sort of sigh: "What that girl has done for me!""I am sure that she would say just that of you," I remarked."Oh, I try her a good deal, sometimes. Her mother was my nurse. When I sent for Leah, I didn't expect to get anything more than, perhaps, some of the hereditary devotion darkies have, even if I got that. But I got a friend. You can't trust her too far, Mr. Castle, believe me! She's pure gold."It happened that, as she spoke, Leah herself came into the room with letters for me. Miss Fielding took the girl's hand and pressed it against her own cheek affectionately. As she did so, I noticed a peculiar scar—a livid U-shaped mark on Leah's wrist. It was the sort of scar that might be left from the wound of a carving-tool—one of the narrower gouges."Was I very horrid yesterday, Leah?" Miss Fielding asked, looking up into the fine brown face."Oh,please, Miss Joy!" Leah begged uneasily."Of courseyouunderstand, Leah; I only want Mr. Castle to know I'm sorry," Miss Fielding insisted."I need only to look at you to be sure you're sorry, and to look at Leah to be sure that there's no need of it," I declared. "At any rate, there's no need of my understanding. In fact that's just what I thought youdidn'twant me to do. Isn't it?"Leah looked quickly from me to Miss Fielding, and back again."Yes, I suppose it is," Miss Fielding said slowly, thoughtfully. "Let's get back on the island again. I'm sure it's big enough for us."We stayed, therefore, "on the island" all that afternoon, touching, that is, but lightly on personal topics. But though we did not go wide, we went deep enough to make the talk hold us absorbed for an hour or more. In quite another way, I think, we went far, as well. Miss Fielding was a stimulating conversationalist. She made me feel at my best. She had that happy way of meeting me on my ground every little while, then going on, and giving me a hand up to hers, and so, by a series of alternate agreements and divergencies, keeping the discussion both sympathetic and various. In most of this quick give-and-take Leah was a passive listener unless specially appealed to, at which times she often expressed herself so succinctly and sapiently that Miss Fielding and I looked at her, and then at one another with a comic expression of admiration and depreciation of our own powers.With such conversation the day went fast. In the afternoon Miss Fielding read to me, and in the evening I spent two or three hours in passive delight listening to her violin.My pain had almost subsided, now, and I looked forward with something more poignant than regret at being able to be up and about, knowing that would mean the beginning of the end of our companionship.VIThe next morning Miss Fielding slept late, and her breakfast order was, as it had been two days before, prosaic. Then, also, she had slept late. This coincidence struck me and gave me a presentiment. I looked curiously for the first sight of her to confirm or destroy a theory that I had been incubating during my long night hours alone. The fact that, as I ate my breakfast, I could hear her whistling in her room helped along my hypothesis. So did Leah's apparent mental detachment.Miss Fielding romped into my room at about half-past nine, and with a laugh and a "Good morning, Chet!" pirouetted up to my bed. My theory instantly gained plausibility. Her manner was what I had anticipated. Her dress, also, was significant.She had on a fussy sort of silk waist, inappropriate, I thought, with her cloth walking-skirt. Her hair was elaborately "marcelled," and she wore bangles that clinked on her wrists; there was the same odor of Santal that I had previously noticed. What was most suggestive was that this get-up was apparently meant to impress me. At least, that was how I interpreted her coquettish smile. I shouldn't care to say that she showed actual poor taste—it was only, I thought, poor taste forher. She needed such adjuncts of fashion so little!"See here," she said, tossing her head and pointing at me dramatically, "you're getting altogether too lazy! I think that you've been in bed long enough. I'm going to get you down-stairs to-day. The doctor said three or four days in bed would do, and now it's five. How do you feel?" She shook the post of my bed with mock ferocity, as if to expend some surplus energy. There seemed to be an extra ounce of blood in her this morning."Oh, I'm game!" I replied. "Nothing would suit me better.""I'll get the library ready, then; Leah and Uncle Jerdon will help you down. Then you can watch me work, if you don't mind. I'm trying to finish my coffret." She felt thoughtfully of her biceps. "I'll get quite a muscle before I'm through. I shall have driven about twelve hundred nails by the time it's done."She walked to the door, swinging her arms, and called, "Leah! Come up here! Quick!"Leah appeared, out of breath, as if, for the moment, she had expected that an accident had happened. She gave a quick apprehensive look about."Leah, we're going to get Mr. Castle downstairs to-day. Is Uncle Jerdon about?""Do you think Mr. Castle is well enough to be moved, yet?" Leah ventured."Didn't I say he was going down-stairs?" Miss Fielding repeated impatiently. "I think we can decide that question. You do as I say. Go and get Uncle Jerdon, and be quick about it, too!""She's spoiled. She thinks she runs this house," Miss Fielding complained to me, when Leah had left.I said nothing, watching her closely. My theory was now pretty well substantiated. I could not pass this scene off as merely one of the "moods" that she and Leah had both mentioned. There was something definitely wrong with Miss Fielding to-day—something more than a mere whim of temper. There had been something wrong two days before, when she had acted similarly. She was distinctly not herself, if her normal self was the graceful, delicate, tactful creature who had first charmed me.It was not only her mood or her taste in costume that seemed different. It was something not quite describable which seemed to permeate her whole personality. She had taken a chair and sat with her right arm cast up over the back. The angle of her raised elbow threw her into a distinctly awkward position. Her gestures, too, were characteristic of this mysterious difference. When they were not distinctly imitative, as in mimicking Uncle Jerdon's table-manners, they were irrelevant, mere spasmodic exhibitions of activity—as when she caught the fly, or swung her arms with active tennis-like gestures. This spontaneous irrelevancy she showed now in the way she doubled her fists and brought them athletically to her shoulders, as she talked, or, raising her foot a little, made circles with her toe, showing the slenderness and suppleness of her ankle. I don't say that all this ebullition of high spirits wasn't, in its way, charming. It was. But it was different from the way she had acted yesterday. Perhaps I can best describe it by saying that she seemed quite ten years younger.She sprang up and, apropos of nothing at all, proceeded to dance or hop sidewise across the room and back hilariously, in sheer excess of vigor. It was what she called "galumphing," and, from time to time, during the day, usually at the end of some little over-serious conversation, she repeated the performance, to my great amusement and delight. It was the absurdly meaningless gamboling of a kid, but it was so delicious in its inconsequence that every time it provoked my laughter.While we were talking nonsense there, Leah came up with Uncle Jerdon. Uncle Jerdon was distinctly a New England type—the chin-bearded, straw-chewing farmer, quaintly original, confident, droll. He was well on in years, a dried-up, wrinkled, toothless bachelor with sparse, straw-colored hair, long in the neck, and twinkling blue eyes full of good nature. He wore overalls and reeked of the stable.Miss Fielding introduced him, and I shook his skinny hand."Wall," he drawled, "thinkin' abeout movin', be ye? I guess Leah an' me'll make a pretty good elevator. I'll help ye get dressed, fust-off, an' then we'll take ye up tenderly, lift ye with care."The two women left while I got my clothes on. It felt good to leave the bed."We been a-tinkerin' on that air machine o' yourn, but it's a leetle bit too much for us, I guess," Uncle Jerdon said. "You'll have to send deown a man, I expect. I wouldn't ride in one o' them pesky things for all the gold of Ophir, no sirree, bob! When I want to go to ride I want to see the back of a good hoss—I know I'll get home by sun-deown."He monologued away thus as he helped me into my clothes, and, when I had finished, called to Leah.She came in, and I took an arm of each, though I scarcely needed their help. We descended a narrow, paneled stairway slowly but safely, without causing me any pain, and turned into a door on the left-hand side of the lower hall. There I found a morris chair ready for me, drawn up before a wide brick fireplace where an oak log was burning. Uncle Jerdon left me with a wink at seeing Leah placing a foot-stool for me and drawing up a taboret on which were cigars and cigarettes. There ensconced, I looked about with interest.It was a large room, finished all in paneled unvarnished redwood, most beautiful in color—a lighter red than mahogany, with more softness and bloom. Two sides were lined with book-cases, except for the chimney-breast; another was almost filled with a broad bow-window of leaded glass with a deep seat covered with corduroy cushions. There was a narrow shelf supported by carved brackets part way up, and a cornice above that. Between the adzed beams of the ceiling were panels of old Spanish leather, lacquered and stamped. The whole effect was a modified French Renaissance worked out with many charming originalities of detail. The pilasters, and the elaborate mantel with its ornamented moldings and graceful consoles, showed handicraft of an interesting sort. They seemed to have been carved by some artistic amateur, being boldly cut without the machine-like regularity of the professional. There was, besides the unusualness of the wood, much to interest me as an architect.The library was well filled without appearing crowded, and everything, furniture and appointments, betokened, as had my chamber, not only taste, but luxury. It was evident that Miss Fielding was very well off, and knew how to use her money. It was as evident that she had a strong personality, for there were details that were unique. A large prism of rock-crystal, for instance, carelessly resting in the sunshine upon the dull brown cushions of the window-seat, threw a prismatic spot of splendor upon the ceiling. It was like a gorgeous butterfly pinned to the leather. There was a silver cage of waltzing Japanese mice upon the mantel, little grotesque, pied creatures that spun wheels, washed their necks with their paws and nibbled at rice. The books, too, were arranged upon the shelves apparently not as regards subjects, but rather on account of their bindings, giving masses of color, green and red and brown and black and white.But it had all been indubitably so well lived in, its properties all ministered so to one's comfort, and the tones were all so restful and admirably composed, that I could imagine no more charming environment for a rainy day with Miss Fielding.A great library table stood in the center of the apartment, one end of which was covered with magazines—everything fromThe Journal of Abnormal Psychologyto thePink 'Un. Upon the other end, resting on a hide of ooze leather, were scattered tools and materials, and the unfinished chest upon which Miss Fielding had been working. This was covered with young calfskin, the soft hair still on, a pretty brindled tan and white, and it was bound on the edges with brass strips. These were fastened in place by close rows of brass-headed nails, which accounted for the pounding I had heard. I was admiring the workmanlike way in which the chest was made, when Miss Fielding came in."What d'you think of my 'bossy coffret'?" she said. "Isn't it going to be a beauty? My own invention. Don't steal the scheme, and I'll show you how."She stood up to the table, and, taking one of the brass strips, laid off the divisions and punched holes for the nails, and then hammered it on. She kept up, meanwhile, a running fire of persiflage. Occasionally she would stop to toss her hammer into the air and catch it nimbly by the handle as it fell."I thought you were going to call me Edna," she said after a while, pausing with some nails in her mouth to look over at me. "Don't you like the name?""I thoughtyoudidn't like it," I said, my eyes turning from her brisk, clever hands, to her absorbed face. A wave passed over it as I looked—that baffled expression I had noticed before."Did I say so!" Her hammer was poised in mid air."Why, didn't you?""Oh, yes, I suppose so. It doesn't matter. Nicknames seldom stick, anyway." She placed a nail in the hole."Oh, I don't object to 'Chet' at all.""'Chet' goes, then." She drove in her nail with a frown.Before I had thought of my promise, I said: "It's funny you don't remember it!"Bang,bang-bang! Another nail went in, driven viciously.I fully expected that she would speak of "the island" again, but she didn't. Instead, she dropped her tools, and said:"I'm building a house, too!""Where?" I asked.She laughed and galumphed across the room and back again without looking at me, before she answered. Then she stopped at the door and called up for Leah to bring down her bunch of keys. When these had come, she knelt in front of the window-seat and unlocked a cupboard below it. From this she brought out a little model house, built of pasteboard, perfect in all its details.It had windows of mica, behind which were white sashes and lace-paper curtains. The house, an old-fashioned New England homestead, was placed in a little yard of green velvet divided by paths of sandpaper, and set out with toy trees. A child would have loved it. A fairy would have appropriated it at first sight. As an architect, the model made a great appeal to me. It had charm and atmosphere, good massing, good proportions, detail and color. I complimented her enthusiastically.She was poking about the little front porch and the platform in the rear, where a miniature ash-barrel stood, adjusting the doors and blinds with her slender forefinger, when she frowned and said:"Why, some one's broken that tree in front! Leah, have you been touching this house? There's a blind gone, too!""No, Miss Joy, I haven't touched it!" Leah protested.Miss Fielding stamped her foot. "You must have! It was all right when I left it here last. Who could have done it, if you didn't?"Leah grew more and more uneasy, but stood her ground. "Indeed, I didn't touch it, Miss Joy!" she repeated."You're all the time meddling with my things. I've caught you at it before. You know altogether too much. Well, go back to your work now!"Leah left in silence, and Miss Fielding put back the house and locked it up. A hard look came into her face that I had not seen before.Her temper passed off almost as soon as it had risen, and she was as gay as before. So until luncheon-time, she worked while I looked over the magazines and talked with her.We sat, at luncheon, on opposite sides of the table in a long and rather narrow room without windows, lighted by a huge skylight. The walls of this strange place were covered with an old-fashioned imitation tapestry paper whose fanciful patterns consisted of consecutive scenes fromThe Lady of the Lake. Everything about the table was heavy, spotless, valuable and old, from the yellow linen to the hand-made forks and spoons. We were waited upon by King, a smiling, round-faced Chinaman with a cue coiled up on top of his head, and wearing a snowy white uniform. He moved like a ghost in and out. Leah and Uncle Jerdon I noticed, when the door was opened, eating at a table in the kitchen.Miss Fielding and I spent the afternoon together in the library. She worked and talked alternately; it appeared that she could not do both at once, and always had to stop with her tool in hand when she spoke to me, like a child. Occasionally she would come over to my chair and seat herself familiarly upon the arm as she joked with me. Then she would spring up, to galumph up and down the room, sidewise, running her hand mischievously through my hair as she passed. I took no notice of the liberty, but I was a little surprised at it. It began to rain that afternoon and by five o'clock it was so dark that Leah came in to light the candles in the silver sconces on the walls. Miss Fielding's spirits were gradually tamed. I asked her to play the violin for me but she refused moodily without excuses.Our talk fell to books, and I went back to Leah's surprising love for Browning."Oh, Leah knows more than is good for her," Miss Fielding said. She was on the window-seat, looking out at the steadily falling rain, her feet curled up under her. "Leah's so educated that she's unhappy; it's a great mistake, that. I can't seem to keep her in her place any more. But really, I don't see any poetry in Browning, do you?""Why!" I said, "I thought you were fond of Browning—that you 'felt' him, even if you didn't 'see' him. Didn't Leah do that for you?""Leah! Fancy! What d'you mean by 'seeing' and 'feeling' him, anyway?" She turned to me with her chin resting on the curled back of her hand."They're your own words," I answered, testily perhaps.She opened her eyes wider. "Oh, I mean what doyoumean?"I didn't answer."If I said it," she continued slowly, as if searching for a plausible excuse, and then giving it up, "I suppose I was trying to impress you. You mustn't expect me to be consistentallthe time.""I'll never expect you to be again," I said, now irritated by her contrariness. I suppose I showed it in my tone.She came right over to me, and took my hand, sitting on the arm of my chair. "Oh, Chet," she pleaded, "don't mind me. I'm a fool, and I know it. I know you don't approve of me any more, but I can't stand it to have you cross with me. I can't bluff you any longer, so I might as well tell you. The fact is, my memory is bad. It's really a disease. Amnesia is the name of it. Now do you see? It isn't my fault, is it? I can't depend upon myself for anything. Sometimes I absolutely forget all about a thing that happened only yesterday. I have great blank spaces in my life when I don't know what has happened. It's perfectly awful! Did you ever hear of any one like that?""Do you really mean to tell me that you forget what you said to me about Browning?" I asked her, taking her hand, for I was filled with a sudden pity."Yes, Chet, sure I do!" She rolled my seal ring between her fingers as she looked down."And about preferring 'Joy' to 'Edna', too?""Oh, did I say that, too? Yes, I forget.""It doesn't seem possible!" I exclaimed. Then, tentatively, almost fearfully, for it seemed the crux: "And about 'the island'?" I held my breath."What 'island'?"I dropped her hand. It was too much for me. "Oh, never mind." I sighed. "I'm very sorry. But I don't quite see, yet. Has this anything to do with your refusal to play for me?"She rose, now, and tossed her head back, with that shake I had noticed before. The gesture seemed to be the only link between her two moods, and, for a moment, she seemed to be again the melancholy princess. But the phase passed instantly, and she grew petulant."I don't know how to play well enough. It bores me."I refused to let her off, however. "Then how about playing chess?"She shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, I haven't got the kind of brain for chess."My mind leaped over the remark, obviously untrue, to get to the other side of the perversity, where I might see more clearly."But it's incredible!" I cried. "How do you get along? How do you account for things? Do you mean to tell me that you can't remember yesterday, for instance? Not even what you did?"She was growing more and more impatient. "No—sometimes I don't know how much time I've lost at all. You see, it's like being asleep, that's all. That's what Doctor Copin comes down here for.""Oh, I see!" I exclaimed."That, and other things—" she hinted coquettishly."Ah?" I raised my eyebrows. "Among the other things, I suppose, is the fact that you're perfectly charming.""Oh, I don't think he quite ignores that," she laughed, and then, her mood changing, as if it had been pent up by such serious discussion and sought relief, she bounded away and galumphed madly up and down the room, waving her hands.After dinner we spent the evening by the fire. She had put on an evening gown of black net over silver tissue, in which she looked more like a princess than ever. But it was only the costume now; her demeanor was far from royal. She snuggled herself into a bunch on the fur rug by the hearth, disclosing one slender ankle and a stocking of snaky silver silk. Had she not been so slender andpetite, I might almost say she sprawled, though her hoidenish abandon was not quite immodest. She had her coffee and a cigarette or two, chattering a steady stream meanwhile. I could get no more about her malady out of her; the subject seemed to annoy her. But I could not get it out of my mind. I went back over what had passed, and found that her explanation accounted for much that had baffled me. Still, it did not account for everything. It did not account, for instance, for the way she now treated me.
IV
The next day was harsh and cloudy. There was a light fog in from the sea, enough to make it a little cold, and to depress my spirits. It was, therefore, with great impatience that I awaited the matutinal visit from my hostess. She was usually up betimes; to-day she slept late.
It had already become one of my chief diversions to listen for the little morning colloquy in the hall, but to-day I heard nothing till after eight o'clock, when Leah came upstairs, knocked on the opposite door, which was always half-open at night, and put her usual question.
Miss Fielding's voice came sharp and clear, a little querulous.
"Oh, I'll have bacon and eggs, I think; but wait a while, Leah; I'm sleepy and I don't want to get up yet."
Leah closed my own door softly and went down-stairs. I was disappointed. I hoped Miss Fielding was not in a bad humor, though that seemed impossible. When Leah came up with the tray and gave me a "good morning," I said:
"Leah, I wish you'd ask Miss Fielding if Nokomis can't come up into my room this morning, will you?"
She hesitated just long enough for me to notice that she was troubled; then she put down the tray, saying:
"Nokomis is a queer old dog, Mr. Castle, and I don't know that she'll come."
"Why, she was here all day yesterday and we had a beautiful time together!"
"I know." Leah turned to leave. "I'll speak about it, of course, but—well, these dogs have all sorts of fancies, and you can't always depend upon them. They will and they won't." She did not look at me as she answered, and went out immediately.
I felt that I had somehow blundered into an indiscretion, though what it was I couldn't possibly see. It made me exceedingly uncomfortable, for I would have done anything rather than take advantage of the kindness and hospitality with which I had been treated. I remembered that I had not yet heard the dogs barking; that might possibly mean something, but it gave me no clue. I had to give it up and try to make amends as well as I might.
A little later I heard Miss Fielding's door slam, and her footsteps running down the stairs. That she had not come in to see me, even if for only a few words, did not decrease my annoyance. Shortly after came a chorus of barks, but I fancied that they were not of the same mood that I had noted before; there seemed to be something antagonistic in their protesting notes, as if some stranger had perhaps passed the house. I had got the idea that Midmeadows was a lonely place, though I had not yet seen the outside of the building, and no doubt the collies were distrustful of visitors. I waited expectantly to hear Miss Fielding call them, one by one, as she had before; but, if she did so, I missed it.
For half an hour or more there was a steady pounding down-stairs, and, when Leah came for my tray, I heard some one whistling, the least bit out of tune. Leah was silent and reserved. She asked how I had slept, and if I were better, and there the conversation ended.
Finally, at about eleven o'clock, Miss Fielding came in. I looked up eagerly.
She wore a stiffly laundered shirt-waist, noticeably stained and soiled, though it had evidently been put on clean that morning. She wore no stock, and the neck was turned away in a V, carelessly, showing a little gold chain with a sapphire pendant, and the sleeves were rolled up above her dimpled elbows. She had a heavy walking-skirt and heavy mannish shoes whose soles projected a full half-inch beyond the uppers. Her hair, which, before, I had always seen exquisitely coiled high on her head, was done in a full pompadour, though now it fell in flat folds over her forehead and wisped out in the back of her neck.
She came up to my bedside and smiled frankly at me. I got a pronounced odor of Santal.
"Well, how are you to-day?" she said jovially. "Do you feel better?"
I said that I did, noticing that she wore three rings on her left hand. It was good to see her so full of life and energy.
"You certainly were a sight when you were brought in," she went on; "I was frightened to death. I never saw any one unconscious before, and I thought you were dead, for sure. Isn't it lucky the doctor was here? I'm awfully sorry your auto was smashed up so, for I'd like to try it myself. I've been wanting one. Yours is a foreign make, isn't it? I've been looking it over. It's a water-cooled engine, I see. But I want a six-cylinder. I'm going to see if Uncle Jerdon and I can't patch it up so that it'll go."
"Fancy a girl's caring about machinery!" I said, smiling at her enthusiasm. "You're the last person in the world I'd ever think would have any interest in it."
"Why?" she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, and, turning down her sleeves, covered her round, strong arms.
"I thought that you were more of the artistic temperament."
"Oh, I like to use my hands," she said. She held one out, its fingers stiffly opened, then clenched her fist firmly. "They're stronger than they look. Try it!"
She took my hand in hers and gave me a grip as strong as any ordinary man's.
"That comes from your violin practice, I suppose," I remarked.
Her eyes were on mine, and I saw that the pupils were dilated, and the irises so dark as almost to appear black. She did not answer me for a moment, and then simply nodded vaguely and changed the subject.
"I've taken the clock apart more than once. The dining-room one, I mean. When the hands point to eight, it strikes four and it's half-past two, really. I have to tell time by an algebraic formula. I'm going to dissect it again and see if I can't get it right." She laughed merrily, swinging her foot back and forth.
At that moment the collies began to bark again. She sprang up impatiently, and went to the window.
"Darn those dogs!" she complained, "don't they make a horrid racket, though! I can't keep them quiet." Then she raised the sash abruptly, leaned out and cried, "Hush up, there!"
Their answer was a chorus of indignation. She let down the window with a clatter, and walked to the mirror to rearrange her hair, using silver pins that shone conspicuously in her dark locks. Her skirt had sagged away from her belt, at the back, from the violence of her work, no doubt, and she reached to fix it, turning to smile at me coquettishly after she did so.
"Do you like my hair done high or low?" she asked.
"I like it best the way I first saw it, that night," I said. "It was done in a fillet, or a bandeau, wasn't it?"
"Why, no! It was pompadoured, wasn't it? Oh, yes—perhaps it was—I forget—but it's so fine that I can't do anything with it."
Except for these little lapses of abstraction when she stared so puzzlingly at me, she was in high spirits. Her presence filled the room with electricity; she surcharged its atmosphere. She seemed more virile than ever, more full of life, so full that it actually seemed to splash over in all sorts of energetic gestures of her head and hands. As she stood, now, in the center of the room, she made a quick dash at a fly that drifted past, caught it in her hand, smiled at her dexterity, and tossed it aside. She made passes and rapid motions with her arms, as if she were swinging a tennis racket, and tapped her toes and heels in a little clog-dance as she walked. I saw that she was getting bored.
"Well," she said at last, "I must go to work. If there's anything you want Leah will do it for you. You can call her. There's the bell. Don't hesitate to ring it. I'll be so glad when you can come down-stairs and see the place. It's a jolly old shack—you'll like it!"
She waved her hand jauntily and swung out of the room. I heard her run downstairs, and a little later the pounding and the whistling recommenced.
She semed different to-day, but I imagined that perhaps it was only that she was feeling better in health and mind, though she had not appeared really ill before. She seemed younger than ever, too, the little lines in her face seemed to be mostly ironed out. No doubt it was, as women say, "her day." Her beauty was more obvious; it was undeniable.
Yet something about her manner troubled me. I was distinctly disappointed; she seemed less subtle, less imaginative. She was no longer the princess of my fairy tale; the spell had waned. But if her familiarity and naturalness upon further acquaintance were less romantic, they were more real, and had some of the actuality of prose. We could still be good friends, for I liked her immensely. Perhaps she had thought we had gone too far sentimentally, and was trying to put our relations upon a firmer and more matter-of-fact basis. Perhaps, even, Doctor Copin's visit had, in some way, affected her, and she had considered that herententewith me was becoming dangerous. Well, it was certainly my place, as a stranger thrust upon her hospitality, to take whatever cue she gave me, disappointing as that line of conduct should prove. For I had been stirred and awakened by her. I could not deny that to myself. And no doubt I had taken her altogether too seriously.
I saw no more of her till late in the afternoon, but, meanwhile, Leah made me a welcome visit. After luncheon she asked me, quite modestly, if I would like her to read to me or would rather play chess. I chose the reading, wanting very much the opportunity of studying her. Her attention seemed, however, to be distracted; I was sure of it when, a little later, she excused herself to go downstairs. Then I noticed the barking of the dogs, high-pitched and excited.
She came back soon to finish her reading, and, that done, we fell to talking. As she sat, her dark face was outlined against the white woodwork of the alcove like a silhouette. Her white teeth shone.
I asked her about her education.
"I went to a school for colored women," she said, "fitting myself to be a teacher. But of course it's hard for a colored girl to get a chance, except with her own race, and I didn't want to go South. Then I got this place with Miss Fielding."
"I can't imagine any situation more delightful," I said, watching her.
Her eyes burned, smothered in quickening tears, but her voice was calm enough. "It's lovely here. I don't mind the loneliness a bit. It's nothing to what I have endured in big cities."
She gave it to me simply, with no apparent bid for sympathy, but I knew enough of the pathetic isolation of the educated negro, cut off from any real mental communion with the blacks as well as with the whites, to interpret the repression of her manner. There was a tragedy in her words.
"Well," I said, "it strikes me that you're in luck to be here with such a companion as Miss Fielding. And she's as fortunate, too. I'm sure you get on beautifully. Still, how she can stand it, away off from every one, I don't see quite so well."
"Do you think she's—unhappy!" Leah asked after a pause.
"Certainly not to-day, at least. Yesterday I shouldn't have been quite so sure that she wasn't."
"Oh, she has her moods," Leah admitted. "I do my best to indulge them." She looked up at me. "So must you, too, Mr. Castle!" She held my eyes deliberately, as if expecting my promise.
"How could I be so ungrateful as not to, in the circumstances?"
"I mean—you see, she doesn't like to be questioned. I have to be very careful. She has her fancies, and often seems inconsistent, even a bit eccentric. It may be her life here alone. You know she sees so few people. You won't notice it?" Still her eyes appealed to me.
"I shan't at least show that I do."
She seemed dissatisfied.
"Except, perhaps, to you," I added, trying, as I had tried with Miss Fielding, to get to the bottom of her dread.
"Oh, not to me," she begged. "She's too fine for us to be discussing. I've said too much already, I'm afraid. I don't know why I did. Only——"
I said it for her. "Only, I am quartered on you, here, and you can't get rid of me. You have, in a way, a spy in camp. By an accident, I'm here, and you're at my mercy. Isn't that it? You don't, I mean, quite know what I am, and you'd like to be able to trust me, whatever happens." It was a jump in the dark for me.
I could see her fingers working; she had clasped her hands.
"Oh, I hope I haven't given you the idea that anything is likely to happen," she said anxiously. "If I have, I'm quite sorry I spoke. If you'll only take everything quite as a matter of course—that's all I mean—her moods, you know, and not think things—" She ended without attempting to be more lucid, for there was a sound of some one coming up-stairs.
Miss Fielding came into the room, and her delicate right eyebrow rose at seeing Leah sitting there, doing nothing.
"Leah, go down and tie up the dogs; they're chasing all over the place!" Her voice was crisp and peremptory.
Leah went away quietly; I got a swift glance of mute appeal at me as she left. Miss Fielding came to my side and looked down at me quizzically, her thumbs in her belt.
"Do you mind telling me your name?" she said. "It's rather awkward not to know, you know."
"Oh, Castle's my real name, right enough," I answered.
"Castle?" she repeated, and then, as if recollecting: "Of course, but I meant your first name." Her face cleared.
"Chester Castle," I enlarged. "A good name for an architect, isn't it?"
"An architect, really? Then I'll have to get you to help me on my little house. But you're too good-looking for an architect," she laughed. "I thought they always wore pointed beards, like doctors."
"Oh, I'm not a Beaux-Arts man," I said, keeping up with her mood.
"Are you married?"
"No, I'm happy to say I'm not."
"So am I!" she laughed. "That is to say, I'm gladI'mnot, and I'm glad you're not. My name is Joy. Isn't it silly? It doesn't fit me at all. I ought to have been called Edna."
"Very well, then, you shall be!" I volunteered.
She took it without surprise or annoyance. "Oh, I don't stand on ceremony. That's silly. If you're going to stay here for a week I shall have to call you Chester. Do you mind? It's an awful bore to have to say 'Mr. Castle' all the time."
"By all means. My mother and my friends call me 'Chet'—"
"That's better still. Chet." She tried it audibly. "I rather like that."
"You're welcome to it." I laughed at her directness.
"But you haven't asked me any questions! I should think you'd be curious. Really, it isn't at all complimentary to have you so indifferent."
"Oh, I'm only keeping 'on the island'," I returned.
"Keeping—what?"
"Don't you remember—about staying 'on the island'? You know you asked me yourself to."
"Oh, yes—did I? I forget." The puzzled look on her face had appeared again, but was driven away. "Well, there really isn't much to know about me. It's stupid enough here at Midmeadows. It's my own place, you know. It used to belong to my grandfather. I've had it ever since he died. I suppose it's good for me here, for I'm ill a good part of the time. I'm up and I'm down. But when I'm up, I'm up pretty high, and when I'm down, I'm 'way down in the depths."
She had sat down in a chair and had crossed her legs, one over the other, wagging one foot and clasping her hands across her knees so tightly that the blood was driven from her white knuckles to the ends of her purple fingers. It is always an awkward pose; I have often wondered how a pretty girl could ever take it. Now she drew her chair closer to the bedside and took my hand.
"Let me see your hand," she said suddenly. "I'll read your palm, if you like."
She bent over it, drawing so near that her head was quite close to mine, so close that, had it not been for the perfume she used, I should have got the odor of her hair. When she turned to me, smiling, she seemed very near indeed, though none too near me. She began her reading of the lines, holding my hand in both hers, pointing to the signs with one finger, trying the resistance of my thumb, squeezing the flesh to determine its firmness, kneading it and handling it in quite the professional manner. It took her some time. The opinions she gave me were not particularly affording, but they were rather cleverly put. She made a good deal of my "magnetism," saying that she could actually feel it. I was properly flattered. I could feel hers, easily enough.
Then she dropped my hand, rose and yawned as freely as had Nokomis herself.
"I'm starving!" she exclaimed. "I must see what's the matter with dinner. I'm sorry you can't come down, Chet. I hate to eat all alone."
"Why, doesn't Leah eat with you?" I asked, surprised.
"No, I can't quite gothat!" she said emphatically, as she made an irrelevant athletic gesture. "I have to draw the line somewhere, you know. I have Uncle Jerdon sometimes, though, just for the fun of seeing him eat. He's perfectly lovely! He holds his fork in the Kansas City style, this way—" She illustrated a familiar restaurant attitude, with the thumb and little finger of her left hand braced under a paper-knife, the three middle fingers curled atop. "Then he always loads up his fork with his knife, a little piece of meat, and a little piece of potato, and a little dab of butter and a little swish of gravy and then—" She showed me how, pretending to toss it into her mouth, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, in a way that made me laugh aloud. "You could hear him eat, 'way up here! Golly! it makes me hungry to talk about it!" she added. "I'll see you later, Chet. Oh—I'll send you up some current jelly. I made it myself; sure cure for the measles! Remember, you have to like it!" And she was off in a two-step.
I smiled to myself at her pantomime, after she was gone. How I had misjudged her at first! She seemed commoner, but our friendship was, perhaps, more natural. She was no longer the wonderful, exotic, medieval princess in the tower, but she was a frank, wholesome creature, full of human charms and faults. I decided, by reason of that sane analysis, that I was improving in health. My bang on the head, no doubt, had made me unduly impressionable.
She did not keep her word in regard to coming in after dinner. Leah brought up my tray, as usual, and took it away, saying that she was unable to stay with me. She seemed abstracted and nervous, and I forbore to question her. I spent a dreary evening alone.
The pounding went on for two hours or more after dinner, and then Miss Fielding came up-stairs to her room. She contented herself with putting her head through the doorway and calling out "Good night, Chet!" and then I heard her door slam. There was no talk between the two women that I could hear.
V
"Sliced kisses, fried in tears," were the words I heard Miss Fielding reply to Leah's morning call, early the next day. I had waited long, for the day was bright and I wakened at sunrise. Her fanciful order put one immediately into a good humor, and I was intensely curious to see what the day would bring forth.
The collies were barking vociferously, joyously. Suddenly they stopped, and then, one by one, I heard them greet their mistress. It was very prettily done. Leah, coming in, found me smiling, and smiled back at me. Seeing me so much better, she offered timidly to help dress me, and I welcomed her proposal to bring me hot water and what was necessary for shaving. My own clothes had been sent down, so I prepared myself for my chatelaine's visit.
Joy came into my room with a sweet, low, "Good morning, Mr. Castle!" which threw me back not a little, after what had taken place on the yesterday. I was about to hazard some good-natured sarcasm, but the sight of her face inhibited it, and something of what Leah had said came back to me. I answered the greeting without comment, therefore, and waited for her to set the pace.
She was in an exquisitely fresh, simple organdy frock, and had on a garden hat and gauntleted garden gloves; her arms were filled with roses. Her brow wrinkled slightly as she noticed the fading blossoms which had been left in the vases.
"I'm afraid I neglected you yesterday," she said, as she set about removing the dejected roses and putting fresh ones in their places. As she came near me, I noticed little dewy drops on her neatly coiled hair, where she had dashed it with violet water. There was no trace of any other scent, save that of the roses. She drew off her gloves and I saw that she wore no rings.
She sat down for a moment. I had observed before that not only could Miss Fielding be remarkably graceful in pose and in action, but that she could be as astonishinglygaucheas well. Astonishingly, that is, for her—for one whocouldbe so graceful. This, however, was decidedly one of her graceful days, or rather, perhaps, as Leah had said, moods. Her lines melted and composed. There was positive elegance in the way she used her hands, gesticulating freely. It enhanced the charm of her voice, so limpid and full of feeling.
"Isn't it a beautiful morning! What a shame it is that you can't get up. You must hurry and convalesce—just enough to be able to see the place, and not so much as to have to go away. Perhaps you can get into a chair by to-morrow. Did you hear my doggies? I can recognize each of them by the voice, and you will be able to, too, if you only stay here long enough. Nokomis is the deepest-toned one. She's the oldest, you know, and the most dignified. Hiawatha is the little yappy one. He's a very silly little pup!"
"I'm sorry Nokomis didn't want to come up to see me, yesterday," I said. "But I hope you'll pardon my taking the liberty of asking for her. I know you probably don't often allow them in the house."
"Why, ofcourseNokomis can come up; the idea! She'd love it. Would you like to see her now?" Then, with her eyes on mine, and noticing my bewildered look, no doubt, she added, with a queer expression, "Nokomis wasn't quite well yesterday. She is getting old, you know." She rose restlessly. "Will you wait a moment, please? I want to speak to Leah," and she went out.
Something had passed over her spirits, I couldn't tell what. It was like the shadow of a cloud sweeping rapidly across a sunny hillside. Whatever it was, it was gone when she returned.
She went directly to the window, threw up the sash, and called down, "Nokomis! Hi, Nokomis!" A bark responded.
"Come up here, old lady! Yes, come right up. Wipe your feet, please. Wipe yourfeet, Nokomis!"
The next thing there was a pattering of feet upon the stairs, and the bitch bounded into the room, her tail wagging. She ran up to Miss Fielding immediately for orders.
"Go and say 'How d'you do?' to Mr. Castle, Nokomis," said Miss Fielding, pointing at me.
Nokomis dropped to the floor again, and with the dignity of a duchess walked over to where I lay, raised her beautiful eyes to mine, lifted a forepaw and laid it on the bed. I shook it and felt for the dog's neck.
"Now, Nokomis—" Miss Fielding began.
She was down on the instant, went to her mistress and stood waiting, her head on one side, her ears half erect, her tail low.
"Go and bring up Chevalier, please," was the command. Nokomis was off like an arrow, and presently there was a to-do in the yard. By this time I could recognize Nokomis' heavy note among the others. Then she and a tan-and-black collie came rollicking into the room. Both came immediately up to their mistress.
"Here's Chevalier, Mr. Castle. He's a pretty good show dog, isn't he? He hasn't got a fancy livery, but he's all right, except his tail's set on a bit too high, and there's a little feather to his hind legs below the hock."
Chevalier whined, and looked up at Miss Fielding. I was quite ready to believe the dog understood what she said.
"Oh, that's all right, Chev, you's a booful, good doggie, and I love you! Chevalier's strain harks back to the original Scott—he's quite a swell, in his way, and has got blue ribbons. But they all want tri-colored calico dogs, now. Go over and pay your respects, Chevalier, please!"
The dog came up to me, was patted, and left with Nokomis, who was next instructed to return with John O'Groat, a big dog, almost wholly black, with a rather blunter muzzle than the others.
"John's got pretty good blood, too, and his mother was from the Lothian Hills, like Norval—no, that was the Grampians. A little hollow-backed, and his forelegs aren't quite straight, but Jack's a good dog, aren't you, Jack? A fine worker, too."
Jack was certainly listening to every word attentively, whether he understood or not. After he had gone, Nokomis brought up Minnehaha, one of her own youngsters, pure white.
"Poor little Minnie," said Miss Fielding, "she's got yellow eyes and a thin coat, but I love her just as much!" Taking the forepaws she held her own face tantalizingly near the dog's tongue. "Just as much, I do. Now go over to Mr. Castle, Miss!"
Last of all came Hiawatha, a frenzied, wriggling, capering puppy, sable-and-white like his mother, yelping, crouching, bounding, hysterical with joy. Miss Fielding and I fell to laughing at his antics, but Hiawatha was too young to care. He was up on top of my bed in half a minute, and stifling me with his eagerness, lapping my face and hands, growling, snarling, biting, scratching all at once. When this frisky, capering bunch of enthusiasm had departed, quite out of his head with the excitement of the visit, Miss Fielding talked dog for ten minutes. She had not forgotten, however, to compliment her pets with a lump of sugar apiece, filched from my tray and dropped from the window with strict precedence.
"Oh," I said, looking at her with admiration, "I do think your own name is the best! It's so like you."
"What d'you mean?" she asked, coming up to me.
"Why—Joy," I replied.
"Of course it is! Isn't it fun to have a name like that? One has quite to live up to it, though. It inspires me, sometimes, when I'm blue."
"Yes; it has distinction. I don't see why you ever should prefer Edna."
"Oh, Edna—" she said seriously. She waited a moment, to shake from her skirt the sand the dogs' paws had left. "Well, I do like Edna, sometimes. It depends upon my mood, I suppose. You know I told you I had moods. Don't try to reconcile me, I know I'm inconsistent. But I'm a woman," she added, looking up more brightly, "and I suppose I have that right."
"I haven't decided whether you're a woman or not," I returned. "Sometimes I have thought you were a princess in disguise."
"Oh, that's nice of you! But why?"
"You're so mysterious, so whimsical, so detached, so romantic."
"Take care!" she warned severely. "You aren't trying to swim off the island, are you?"
I opened my eyes at this.
"You still hold me to my promise—after yesterday?"
"Why not?" she said, a little blankly.
"Why, I thought we were well off the island—at leastyouwere. I thought that you had given up the game."
"Why?" she asked, looking at me directly, in seeming surprise. "I think you must have mistaken my meaning."
I couldn't quite get it. "You asked me all sorts of questions, anyway, you know," I ventured.
Her eyes begged for mercy. "I'm sorry if I was impertinent——"
"Oh, I don't mean that, of course. You couldn't be. You had a perfect right to ask, of course."
"Can't I row back in a boat, please?" she pouted whimsically. "Don't give it up yet. Not till I give you specific leave of absence. I suppose I'm spoiled. I want my cake to keep and eat, too."
I was a little relieved at her recognition of her own inconsistency, though I felt a queer hiatus somewhere. It was as if, mentally, I had tried to go up a step where there was none. But I let the subject drop. She took up the books on the stand and began to look them over.
"Don't you think Leah reads beautifully?" she asked.
"It's charming to hear her, but; if you don't mind, I prefer to hear you."
She took all my compliments so graciously, without either embarrassed denial or vanity, that I loved to watch her when I tried a gallantry. Now she only nodded to me, sweepingly, with mock deference, and went on:
"Leah and I disagree somewhat. I have more manner, perhaps, and less rhythm. We read a good deal together. I think she sees Browning much more clearly than I. Perhaps I feel him more keenly."
"She's a remarkable girl—I was going to add 'for a negress,' but I needn't qualify it."
"Oh, no! You don'tknowhow fine she is." Seating herself she added, as if to herself, in a sort of sigh: "What that girl has done for me!"
"I am sure that she would say just that of you," I remarked.
"Oh, I try her a good deal, sometimes. Her mother was my nurse. When I sent for Leah, I didn't expect to get anything more than, perhaps, some of the hereditary devotion darkies have, even if I got that. But I got a friend. You can't trust her too far, Mr. Castle, believe me! She's pure gold."
It happened that, as she spoke, Leah herself came into the room with letters for me. Miss Fielding took the girl's hand and pressed it against her own cheek affectionately. As she did so, I noticed a peculiar scar—a livid U-shaped mark on Leah's wrist. It was the sort of scar that might be left from the wound of a carving-tool—one of the narrower gouges.
"Was I very horrid yesterday, Leah?" Miss Fielding asked, looking up into the fine brown face.
"Oh,please, Miss Joy!" Leah begged uneasily.
"Of courseyouunderstand, Leah; I only want Mr. Castle to know I'm sorry," Miss Fielding insisted.
"I need only to look at you to be sure you're sorry, and to look at Leah to be sure that there's no need of it," I declared. "At any rate, there's no need of my understanding. In fact that's just what I thought youdidn'twant me to do. Isn't it?"
Leah looked quickly from me to Miss Fielding, and back again.
"Yes, I suppose it is," Miss Fielding said slowly, thoughtfully. "Let's get back on the island again. I'm sure it's big enough for us."
We stayed, therefore, "on the island" all that afternoon, touching, that is, but lightly on personal topics. But though we did not go wide, we went deep enough to make the talk hold us absorbed for an hour or more. In quite another way, I think, we went far, as well. Miss Fielding was a stimulating conversationalist. She made me feel at my best. She had that happy way of meeting me on my ground every little while, then going on, and giving me a hand up to hers, and so, by a series of alternate agreements and divergencies, keeping the discussion both sympathetic and various. In most of this quick give-and-take Leah was a passive listener unless specially appealed to, at which times she often expressed herself so succinctly and sapiently that Miss Fielding and I looked at her, and then at one another with a comic expression of admiration and depreciation of our own powers.
With such conversation the day went fast. In the afternoon Miss Fielding read to me, and in the evening I spent two or three hours in passive delight listening to her violin.
My pain had almost subsided, now, and I looked forward with something more poignant than regret at being able to be up and about, knowing that would mean the beginning of the end of our companionship.
VI
The next morning Miss Fielding slept late, and her breakfast order was, as it had been two days before, prosaic. Then, also, she had slept late. This coincidence struck me and gave me a presentiment. I looked curiously for the first sight of her to confirm or destroy a theory that I had been incubating during my long night hours alone. The fact that, as I ate my breakfast, I could hear her whistling in her room helped along my hypothesis. So did Leah's apparent mental detachment.
Miss Fielding romped into my room at about half-past nine, and with a laugh and a "Good morning, Chet!" pirouetted up to my bed. My theory instantly gained plausibility. Her manner was what I had anticipated. Her dress, also, was significant.
She had on a fussy sort of silk waist, inappropriate, I thought, with her cloth walking-skirt. Her hair was elaborately "marcelled," and she wore bangles that clinked on her wrists; there was the same odor of Santal that I had previously noticed. What was most suggestive was that this get-up was apparently meant to impress me. At least, that was how I interpreted her coquettish smile. I shouldn't care to say that she showed actual poor taste—it was only, I thought, poor taste forher. She needed such adjuncts of fashion so little!
"See here," she said, tossing her head and pointing at me dramatically, "you're getting altogether too lazy! I think that you've been in bed long enough. I'm going to get you down-stairs to-day. The doctor said three or four days in bed would do, and now it's five. How do you feel?" She shook the post of my bed with mock ferocity, as if to expend some surplus energy. There seemed to be an extra ounce of blood in her this morning.
"Oh, I'm game!" I replied. "Nothing would suit me better."
"I'll get the library ready, then; Leah and Uncle Jerdon will help you down. Then you can watch me work, if you don't mind. I'm trying to finish my coffret." She felt thoughtfully of her biceps. "I'll get quite a muscle before I'm through. I shall have driven about twelve hundred nails by the time it's done."
She walked to the door, swinging her arms, and called, "Leah! Come up here! Quick!"
Leah appeared, out of breath, as if, for the moment, she had expected that an accident had happened. She gave a quick apprehensive look about.
"Leah, we're going to get Mr. Castle downstairs to-day. Is Uncle Jerdon about?"
"Do you think Mr. Castle is well enough to be moved, yet?" Leah ventured.
"Didn't I say he was going down-stairs?" Miss Fielding repeated impatiently. "I think we can decide that question. You do as I say. Go and get Uncle Jerdon, and be quick about it, too!"
"She's spoiled. She thinks she runs this house," Miss Fielding complained to me, when Leah had left.
I said nothing, watching her closely. My theory was now pretty well substantiated. I could not pass this scene off as merely one of the "moods" that she and Leah had both mentioned. There was something definitely wrong with Miss Fielding to-day—something more than a mere whim of temper. There had been something wrong two days before, when she had acted similarly. She was distinctly not herself, if her normal self was the graceful, delicate, tactful creature who had first charmed me.
It was not only her mood or her taste in costume that seemed different. It was something not quite describable which seemed to permeate her whole personality. She had taken a chair and sat with her right arm cast up over the back. The angle of her raised elbow threw her into a distinctly awkward position. Her gestures, too, were characteristic of this mysterious difference. When they were not distinctly imitative, as in mimicking Uncle Jerdon's table-manners, they were irrelevant, mere spasmodic exhibitions of activity—as when she caught the fly, or swung her arms with active tennis-like gestures. This spontaneous irrelevancy she showed now in the way she doubled her fists and brought them athletically to her shoulders, as she talked, or, raising her foot a little, made circles with her toe, showing the slenderness and suppleness of her ankle. I don't say that all this ebullition of high spirits wasn't, in its way, charming. It was. But it was different from the way she had acted yesterday. Perhaps I can best describe it by saying that she seemed quite ten years younger.
She sprang up and, apropos of nothing at all, proceeded to dance or hop sidewise across the room and back hilariously, in sheer excess of vigor. It was what she called "galumphing," and, from time to time, during the day, usually at the end of some little over-serious conversation, she repeated the performance, to my great amusement and delight. It was the absurdly meaningless gamboling of a kid, but it was so delicious in its inconsequence that every time it provoked my laughter.
While we were talking nonsense there, Leah came up with Uncle Jerdon. Uncle Jerdon was distinctly a New England type—the chin-bearded, straw-chewing farmer, quaintly original, confident, droll. He was well on in years, a dried-up, wrinkled, toothless bachelor with sparse, straw-colored hair, long in the neck, and twinkling blue eyes full of good nature. He wore overalls and reeked of the stable.
Miss Fielding introduced him, and I shook his skinny hand.
"Wall," he drawled, "thinkin' abeout movin', be ye? I guess Leah an' me'll make a pretty good elevator. I'll help ye get dressed, fust-off, an' then we'll take ye up tenderly, lift ye with care."
The two women left while I got my clothes on. It felt good to leave the bed.
"We been a-tinkerin' on that air machine o' yourn, but it's a leetle bit too much for us, I guess," Uncle Jerdon said. "You'll have to send deown a man, I expect. I wouldn't ride in one o' them pesky things for all the gold of Ophir, no sirree, bob! When I want to go to ride I want to see the back of a good hoss—I know I'll get home by sun-deown."
He monologued away thus as he helped me into my clothes, and, when I had finished, called to Leah.
She came in, and I took an arm of each, though I scarcely needed their help. We descended a narrow, paneled stairway slowly but safely, without causing me any pain, and turned into a door on the left-hand side of the lower hall. There I found a morris chair ready for me, drawn up before a wide brick fireplace where an oak log was burning. Uncle Jerdon left me with a wink at seeing Leah placing a foot-stool for me and drawing up a taboret on which were cigars and cigarettes. There ensconced, I looked about with interest.
It was a large room, finished all in paneled unvarnished redwood, most beautiful in color—a lighter red than mahogany, with more softness and bloom. Two sides were lined with book-cases, except for the chimney-breast; another was almost filled with a broad bow-window of leaded glass with a deep seat covered with corduroy cushions. There was a narrow shelf supported by carved brackets part way up, and a cornice above that. Between the adzed beams of the ceiling were panels of old Spanish leather, lacquered and stamped. The whole effect was a modified French Renaissance worked out with many charming originalities of detail. The pilasters, and the elaborate mantel with its ornamented moldings and graceful consoles, showed handicraft of an interesting sort. They seemed to have been carved by some artistic amateur, being boldly cut without the machine-like regularity of the professional. There was, besides the unusualness of the wood, much to interest me as an architect.
The library was well filled without appearing crowded, and everything, furniture and appointments, betokened, as had my chamber, not only taste, but luxury. It was evident that Miss Fielding was very well off, and knew how to use her money. It was as evident that she had a strong personality, for there were details that were unique. A large prism of rock-crystal, for instance, carelessly resting in the sunshine upon the dull brown cushions of the window-seat, threw a prismatic spot of splendor upon the ceiling. It was like a gorgeous butterfly pinned to the leather. There was a silver cage of waltzing Japanese mice upon the mantel, little grotesque, pied creatures that spun wheels, washed their necks with their paws and nibbled at rice. The books, too, were arranged upon the shelves apparently not as regards subjects, but rather on account of their bindings, giving masses of color, green and red and brown and black and white.
But it had all been indubitably so well lived in, its properties all ministered so to one's comfort, and the tones were all so restful and admirably composed, that I could imagine no more charming environment for a rainy day with Miss Fielding.
A great library table stood in the center of the apartment, one end of which was covered with magazines—everything fromThe Journal of Abnormal Psychologyto thePink 'Un. Upon the other end, resting on a hide of ooze leather, were scattered tools and materials, and the unfinished chest upon which Miss Fielding had been working. This was covered with young calfskin, the soft hair still on, a pretty brindled tan and white, and it was bound on the edges with brass strips. These were fastened in place by close rows of brass-headed nails, which accounted for the pounding I had heard. I was admiring the workmanlike way in which the chest was made, when Miss Fielding came in.
"What d'you think of my 'bossy coffret'?" she said. "Isn't it going to be a beauty? My own invention. Don't steal the scheme, and I'll show you how."
She stood up to the table, and, taking one of the brass strips, laid off the divisions and punched holes for the nails, and then hammered it on. She kept up, meanwhile, a running fire of persiflage. Occasionally she would stop to toss her hammer into the air and catch it nimbly by the handle as it fell.
"I thought you were going to call me Edna," she said after a while, pausing with some nails in her mouth to look over at me. "Don't you like the name?"
"I thoughtyoudidn't like it," I said, my eyes turning from her brisk, clever hands, to her absorbed face. A wave passed over it as I looked—that baffled expression I had noticed before.
"Did I say so!" Her hammer was poised in mid air.
"Why, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so. It doesn't matter. Nicknames seldom stick, anyway." She placed a nail in the hole.
"Oh, I don't object to 'Chet' at all."
"'Chet' goes, then." She drove in her nail with a frown.
Before I had thought of my promise, I said: "It's funny you don't remember it!"
Bang,bang-bang! Another nail went in, driven viciously.
I fully expected that she would speak of "the island" again, but she didn't. Instead, she dropped her tools, and said:
"I'm building a house, too!"
"Where?" I asked.
She laughed and galumphed across the room and back again without looking at me, before she answered. Then she stopped at the door and called up for Leah to bring down her bunch of keys. When these had come, she knelt in front of the window-seat and unlocked a cupboard below it. From this she brought out a little model house, built of pasteboard, perfect in all its details.
It had windows of mica, behind which were white sashes and lace-paper curtains. The house, an old-fashioned New England homestead, was placed in a little yard of green velvet divided by paths of sandpaper, and set out with toy trees. A child would have loved it. A fairy would have appropriated it at first sight. As an architect, the model made a great appeal to me. It had charm and atmosphere, good massing, good proportions, detail and color. I complimented her enthusiastically.
She was poking about the little front porch and the platform in the rear, where a miniature ash-barrel stood, adjusting the doors and blinds with her slender forefinger, when she frowned and said:
"Why, some one's broken that tree in front! Leah, have you been touching this house? There's a blind gone, too!"
"No, Miss Joy, I haven't touched it!" Leah protested.
Miss Fielding stamped her foot. "You must have! It was all right when I left it here last. Who could have done it, if you didn't?"
Leah grew more and more uneasy, but stood her ground. "Indeed, I didn't touch it, Miss Joy!" she repeated.
"You're all the time meddling with my things. I've caught you at it before. You know altogether too much. Well, go back to your work now!"
Leah left in silence, and Miss Fielding put back the house and locked it up. A hard look came into her face that I had not seen before.
Her temper passed off almost as soon as it had risen, and she was as gay as before. So until luncheon-time, she worked while I looked over the magazines and talked with her.
We sat, at luncheon, on opposite sides of the table in a long and rather narrow room without windows, lighted by a huge skylight. The walls of this strange place were covered with an old-fashioned imitation tapestry paper whose fanciful patterns consisted of consecutive scenes fromThe Lady of the Lake. Everything about the table was heavy, spotless, valuable and old, from the yellow linen to the hand-made forks and spoons. We were waited upon by King, a smiling, round-faced Chinaman with a cue coiled up on top of his head, and wearing a snowy white uniform. He moved like a ghost in and out. Leah and Uncle Jerdon I noticed, when the door was opened, eating at a table in the kitchen.
Miss Fielding and I spent the afternoon together in the library. She worked and talked alternately; it appeared that she could not do both at once, and always had to stop with her tool in hand when she spoke to me, like a child. Occasionally she would come over to my chair and seat herself familiarly upon the arm as she joked with me. Then she would spring up, to galumph up and down the room, sidewise, running her hand mischievously through my hair as she passed. I took no notice of the liberty, but I was a little surprised at it. It began to rain that afternoon and by five o'clock it was so dark that Leah came in to light the candles in the silver sconces on the walls. Miss Fielding's spirits were gradually tamed. I asked her to play the violin for me but she refused moodily without excuses.
Our talk fell to books, and I went back to Leah's surprising love for Browning.
"Oh, Leah knows more than is good for her," Miss Fielding said. She was on the window-seat, looking out at the steadily falling rain, her feet curled up under her. "Leah's so educated that she's unhappy; it's a great mistake, that. I can't seem to keep her in her place any more. But really, I don't see any poetry in Browning, do you?"
"Why!" I said, "I thought you were fond of Browning—that you 'felt' him, even if you didn't 'see' him. Didn't Leah do that for you?"
"Leah! Fancy! What d'you mean by 'seeing' and 'feeling' him, anyway?" She turned to me with her chin resting on the curled back of her hand.
"They're your own words," I answered, testily perhaps.
She opened her eyes wider. "Oh, I mean what doyoumean?"
I didn't answer.
"If I said it," she continued slowly, as if searching for a plausible excuse, and then giving it up, "I suppose I was trying to impress you. You mustn't expect me to be consistentallthe time."
"I'll never expect you to be again," I said, now irritated by her contrariness. I suppose I showed it in my tone.
She came right over to me, and took my hand, sitting on the arm of my chair. "Oh, Chet," she pleaded, "don't mind me. I'm a fool, and I know it. I know you don't approve of me any more, but I can't stand it to have you cross with me. I can't bluff you any longer, so I might as well tell you. The fact is, my memory is bad. It's really a disease. Amnesia is the name of it. Now do you see? It isn't my fault, is it? I can't depend upon myself for anything. Sometimes I absolutely forget all about a thing that happened only yesterday. I have great blank spaces in my life when I don't know what has happened. It's perfectly awful! Did you ever hear of any one like that?"
"Do you really mean to tell me that you forget what you said to me about Browning?" I asked her, taking her hand, for I was filled with a sudden pity.
"Yes, Chet, sure I do!" She rolled my seal ring between her fingers as she looked down.
"And about preferring 'Joy' to 'Edna', too?"
"Oh, did I say that, too? Yes, I forget."
"It doesn't seem possible!" I exclaimed. Then, tentatively, almost fearfully, for it seemed the crux: "And about 'the island'?" I held my breath.
"What 'island'?"
I dropped her hand. It was too much for me. "Oh, never mind." I sighed. "I'm very sorry. But I don't quite see, yet. Has this anything to do with your refusal to play for me?"
She rose, now, and tossed her head back, with that shake I had noticed before. The gesture seemed to be the only link between her two moods, and, for a moment, she seemed to be again the melancholy princess. But the phase passed instantly, and she grew petulant.
"I don't know how to play well enough. It bores me."
I refused to let her off, however. "Then how about playing chess?"
She shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, I haven't got the kind of brain for chess."
My mind leaped over the remark, obviously untrue, to get to the other side of the perversity, where I might see more clearly.
"But it's incredible!" I cried. "How do you get along? How do you account for things? Do you mean to tell me that you can't remember yesterday, for instance? Not even what you did?"
She was growing more and more impatient. "No—sometimes I don't know how much time I've lost at all. You see, it's like being asleep, that's all. That's what Doctor Copin comes down here for."
"Oh, I see!" I exclaimed.
"That, and other things—" she hinted coquettishly.
"Ah?" I raised my eyebrows. "Among the other things, I suppose, is the fact that you're perfectly charming."
"Oh, I don't think he quite ignores that," she laughed, and then, her mood changing, as if it had been pent up by such serious discussion and sought relief, she bounded away and galumphed madly up and down the room, waving her hands.
After dinner we spent the evening by the fire. She had put on an evening gown of black net over silver tissue, in which she looked more like a princess than ever. But it was only the costume now; her demeanor was far from royal. She snuggled herself into a bunch on the fur rug by the hearth, disclosing one slender ankle and a stocking of snaky silver silk. Had she not been so slender andpetite, I might almost say she sprawled, though her hoidenish abandon was not quite immodest. She had her coffee and a cigarette or two, chattering a steady stream meanwhile. I could get no more about her malady out of her; the subject seemed to annoy her. But I could not get it out of my mind. I went back over what had passed, and found that her explanation accounted for much that had baffled me. Still, it did not account for everything. It did not account, for instance, for the way she now treated me.