"'Come on, my partners in distress,My comrades through this wilderness,'"
he said, and the others grunted and started on.
When they had disappeared in the snow we got out of our cramped position and prepared to scurry home. I climbed the fence and looked after them. "Humph!" I said, "I guess that basket isn't for the hungry poor. I'd give a good bit to know—" Then I turned and looked for Miss Patty. She was flat on the snow, crawling between the two lower rails of the fence.
"Have you no shame?" I demanded.
She looked up at me with her head and half her long sealskin coat through the fence.
"None," she said pitifully. "Minnie, I'm stuck perfectly tight!"
"You ought to be left as you are," I said, jerking at her, "for people to come"—jerk—"to-morrow to look at"—jerk. She came through at that, and we lay together in the snow and like to burst a rib laughing.
"You'll never be a princess, Miss Patty," I declared. "You're too lowly minded."
She sat up suddenly and straightened her sealskin cap on her head.
"I wish," she said unpleasantly, "I wish you wouldn't always drag in disagreeable things, Minnie!"
And she was sulky all the way to the house.
Miss Summers came to my room that night as I was putting my hot-water bottle to bed, in a baby-blue silk wrapper with a band of fur around the low neck—Miss Summers, of course, not the hot-water bottle.
"Well!" she said, sitting down on the foot of the bed and staring at me. "Well, young woman, for a person who has never been farther away than Finleyville you do pretty well!"
"Do what?" I asked, with the covers up to my chin.
"Do what, Miss Innocence!" she said mockingly. "You're the only red-haired woman I ever saw who didn't look as sophisticated as the devil. I'll tell you one thing, though." She reached down into the pocket of her dressing-gown and brought up a cigarette and a match. "You never had me fooled for a minute!" She looked at me over the match.
I lay and stared back.
"And another thing," she said. "I never had any real intention of marrying Dicky Carter and raising a baby sanatorium. I wouldn't have the face to ask Arabella to live here."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Miss Summers," I said. "I've gone through a lot; I'm an old woman in the last two weeks. My hair's falling from its having to stand up on end half the time."
She leaned over and put her cigarette on the back of my celluloid mirror, and then suddenly she threw back her head and laughed.
"Minnie!" she said, between fits, "Minnie! As long as I live I'll never forget that wretched boy's face! And the sand boxes! And the blankets over the windows! And the tarpaulin over the rafters! And Mr. Van Alstyne sitting on the lawnmower! I'd rather have had my minute in that doorway than fifty thousand dollars!"
"If you had had to carry out all those things—" I began, but she checked me.
"Listen!" she said. "Somebody with brains has got to take you young people in hand. You're not able to look after yourselves. I'm fond of Alan Pierce, for one thing, and I don't care to see a sanatorium that might have been the child of my solicitude kidnaped and reared as a summer hotel by Papa Thoburn. A good fat man is very, very good, Minnie, but when he is bad he is horrid."
"It's too late," I objected feebly. "He can't get it now."
"Can't he!" She got up and yawned, stretching. "Well, I'll lay you ten to one that if we don't get busy he'll have the house empty in thirty-six hours, and a bill of sale on it in as many days."
The celluloid mirror blazed up at that minute, and she poured the contents of my water-pitcher over the dresser. For the next hour, while I was emptying water out of the bureau drawers and hanging up my clothes to dry, she told me what she knew of Thoburn's scheme, and it turned me cold.
But I went to bed finally. Just as I was dozing off, somebody opened my door, and I heard a curious scraping along the floor. I turned on the light, and there was Arabella, half-dragging and half-carrying a solid silver hand-mirror with a card on it: "To Minnie, to replace the one that blew up. J. S."
Doctor Barnes came to me at the news stand the next morning before gymnasium.
"Well," he said, "you look as busy as a dog with fleas. Have you heard the glad tidings?"
"What?" I asked without much spirit. "I've heard considerable tidings lately, and not much of it has cheered me up any."
He leaned over and ran his fingers up through his hair.
"You know, Miss Minnie," he said, "somebody ought kindly to kill our friend Thoburn, or he'll come to a bad end."
"Shall I do it, or will you?" I said, filling up the chewing-gum jar. (Mr. Pierce had taken away the candy case.)
Doctor Barnes glanced around to see if there was any one near, and leaned farther over.
"The cupboard isn't empty now!" he said. "Not for nothing did I spend part of the night in the Dicky-bird's nest! By the way, did you ever hear that touching story about little Sally walking up and laying an egg?—I see you have. What do you think is in the cupboard?"
"I know about it," I said shortly. "Liquor—in a case labeled 'Books—breakable.'"
"'Sing a song of sixpence, a cupboard full of rye!'" he said. "Almost a goal! But not ONLY liquors, my little friend. Champagne—cases of it—caviar, canned grouse with truffles, lobster, cheeses, fine cigars, everything you could think of, erotic, exotic and narcotic. An orgy in cans and bottles, a bacchanalian revel: a cupboard full of indigestion, joy, forgetfulness and katzenjammer. Oh, my suffering palate, to have to leave it all without one sniff, one sip, one nibble!"
"He's wasting his money," I said. "They're all crazy about the simple life."
He looked around and, seeing no one in the lobby, reached over and took one of my hands.
"Strange," he said, looking at it. "No webs, and yet it's been an amphibious little creature most of its life. My dear girl, our friend Thoburn is a rascal, but he is also a student of mankind and a philosopher. Gee," he said, "think of a woman fighting her way alone through the world with a bit of a fist like that!"
I jerked my hand away.
"It's like this, my dear," he said. "Human nature's a curious thing. It's human nature, for instance, for me to be crazy about you, when you're as hands-offish as a curly porcupine. And it is human nature, by the same token, to like to be bullied, especially about health, and to respect and admire the fellow who does the bullying. That's why we were crazy about Roosevelt, and that's why Pierce is trailing his kingly robes over them while they lie on their faces and eat dirt—and stewed fruit."
He reached for my hand again, but I put it behind me.
"But alas," he said, "there is another side to human nature, and our friend Thoburn has not kept a summer hotel for nothing. It is notoriously weak, especially as to stomach. You may feed 'em prunes and whole-wheat bread and apple sauce, and after a while they'll forget the fat days, and remember only the lean and hungry ones. But let some student of human nature at the proper moment introduce just one fat day, one feast, one revel—"
"Talk English," I said sharply.
"Don't break in on my flights of fancy," he objected. "If you want the truth, Thoburn is going to have a party—a forbidden feast. He's going to rouse again the sleeping dogs of appetite, and send them ravening back to the Plaza, to Sherry's and Del's and the little Italian restaurants on Sixth Avenue. He's going to take them up on a high mountain and show them the wines and delicatessen of the earth, and then ask them if they're going to be bullied into eating boiled beef and cabbage."
"Then I don't care how soon he does it," I said despondently. "I'd rather die quickly than by inches."
"Die!" he said. "Not a bit of it. Remember, our friend Pierce is also a student of human nature. He's thinking it out now in the cold plunge, and I miss my guess if Thoburn's sky-rocket hasn't got a stick that'll come back and hit him on the head."
He had been playing with one of the chewing-gum jars, and when he had gone I shoved it back into its place. It was by the merest chance that I glanced at it, and I saw that he had slipped a small white box inside. I knew I was being a silly old fool, but my heart beat fast when I took it out and looked at it. On the lid was written "For a good girl," and inside lay the red puffs from Mrs. Yost's window down in Finleyville. Just under them was an envelope. I could scarcely see to open it.
"Dearest Minnie," the note inside said, "I had them matched to my own thatch, and I think they'll match yours. And since, in the words of the great Herbert Spencer, things that match the same thing match each other—! What do you say?—Barnes."
"P. S.—I love you. I feel like a damn fool saying it, but heaven knows it's true."
"P. P. S.—Still love you. It's easier the second time."
"N. B.—I love you—got the habit now and can't stop writing it.—B."
Well, I had to keep calm and attend to business, but I was seething inside like a Seidlitz powder. Every few minutes I'd reread the letter under the edge of the stand, and the more I read it the more excited I got. When a woman's gone past thirty before she gets her first love-letter, she isn't sure whether to thank providence or the man, but she's pretty sure to make a fool of herself.
Thoburn came to the news stand on his way out with the ice-cutting gang to the pond.
"Last call to the dining-car, Minnie," he said. "'Will you—won't you—will you—won't you—will you join the dance?'"
"I haven't any reason for changing my plans," I retorted. "I promised the old doctor to stick by the place, and I'm sticking."
"As the man said when he sat down on the flypaper. You're going by your heart, Minnie, and not by your head, and in this toss, heads win."
But with my new puffs on the back of my head, and my letter in my pocket, I wasn't easy to discourage. Thoburn shouldered his pick and, headed by Doctor Barnes, the ice-cutters started out in single file. As they passed the news stand Doctor Barnes glanced at me, and my heart almost stopped.
"Do they—is it a match?" he asked, with his eyes on mine.
I couldn't speak, but I nodded "yes," and all that afternoon I could see the wonderful smile that lit up his face as he went out. It made him almost good-looking. Oh, there's nothing like love, especially if you've waited long enough to be hungry for it, and not spoiled your taste for it by a bite here and a piece of a heart there, beforehand, so to speak.
Miss Cobb stopped at the news stand on her way to the gymnasium. She was a homely woman at any time, and in her bloomers she looked like a soup-bone. Under ordinary circumstances she'd have seen the puffs from the staircase and have asked what they cost and told me they didn't match, in one breath. But she had something else on her mind. She padded over to the counter in her gym shoes, and for once she'd forgotten her legs.
"May I speak to you, Minnie?" she asked.
"You mostly do," I said. "There isn't a new rule about speaking, is there?"
"This is important, Minnie," she said, rolling her eyes around as she always did when she was excited. "I'm in such a state of ex—I see you bought the puffs! Perhaps you will lend them to me if we arrange for a country dance."
"They don't match," I objected. "They—they wouldn't look natural, Miss Cobb."
"They don't look natural on you, either. Do you suppose anybody believes that the Lord sent you hair in seventeen rows of pipes, so that, red as it is, it looks like an instantaneous water-heater?"
"I'm not lending them," I said firmly. It would have been like lending an engagement ring, to my mind. Miss Cobb was not offended. She went at once to what had brought her, and bent over the counter.
"Where's the Summers woman?" she asked.
"In the gym. She's made herself a new gym suit out of her polka dotted silk, and she looks lovely."
"Humph!" retorted Miss Cobb. "Minnie, you love Miss Jennings almost like a daughter, don't you?"
"Like a sister, Miss Cobb," I said. "I'm not feeble yet."
"Well, you wouldn't want to see her deceived."
"I wouldn't have it," I answered.
"Then what do you call this?" She put a small package on the counter, and stared at me over it. "There's treachery here, black treachery." She pointed one long thin forefinger at the bundle.
"What is it? A bomb?" I asked, stepping back. More than once it had occurred to me that having royalty around sometimes meant dynamite. Miss Cobb showed her teeth.
"Yes, a bomb," she said. "Minnie, since that creature took my letters and my er—protectors, I have suspected her. Now listen. Yesterday I went over the letters and I missed one that beautiful one in verse, beginning, 'Oh, creature of the slender form and face!' Minnie, it had disappeared—melted away."
"I'm not surprised," I said.
"And so, last night, when the Summers woman was out, goodness knows where, Blanche Moody and I went through her room. We did not find my precious missive from Mr. Jones, but we did find these, Minnie, tied around with a pink silk stocking."
"Heavens!" I said, mockingly. "Not a pink silk!"
"Pink," she repeated solemnly. "Minnie, I have felt it all along. Mr. Oskar von Inwald is the prince himself."
"No!"
"Yes. And more than that, he is making desperate love to Miss Summers. Three of those letters were written in one day! Why, even Mr. Jones—"
"The wretch!" I cried. I was suddenly savage. I wanted to take Mr. von Inwald by the throat and choke him until his lying tongue was black, to put the letters where Miss Patty could never see them. I wanted—I had to stop to sell Senator Biggs some chewing-gum, and when he had gone, Miss Cobb was reaching out for the bundle. I snatched it from her.
"Give me those letters instantly," she cried shrilly. But I marched from behind the counter and over to the fireplace.
"Never," I said, and put the package on the log. When they were safely blazing, I turned and looked at Miss Cobb.
"I'd put my hand right beside those letters to save Miss Patty a heartache," I said, "and you know it."
"You're a fool." She was raging. "You'll let her marry him and have the heartaches afterward."
"She won't marry him," I snapped, and walked away with my chin up, leaving her staring.
But I wasn't so sure as I pretended to be. Mr. von Inwald and Mr. Jennings had been closeted together most of the morning, and Mr. von Inwald was whistling as he started out for the military walk. It seemed as if the very thing that had given Mr. Pierce his chance to make good had improved Mr. Jennings' disposition enough to remove the last barrier to Miss Jennings' wedding with somebody else.
Well, what's one man's meat is another man's poison.
Even if we hadn't known, we'd have guessed there was something in the air. There was an air of subdued excitement during the rest hour in the spring-house, and a good bit of whispering and laughing, in groups which would break up with faces as long as the moral law the moment they saw my eye on them.
They were planning a mutiny, as you may say, and I guess no sailors on a pirate ship were more afraid of the captain's fist than they were of Mr. Pierce's disapproval. He'd been smart enough to see that most of them, having bullied other people all their lives, liked the novelty of being bullied themselves. And now they were getting a new thrill by having a revolt. They were terribly worked up.
Miss Patty stayed after the others had gone, sitting in front of the empty fireplace in the same chair Mr. Pierce usually took, and keeping her back to me. When I'd finished folding the steamer rugs and putting them away, I went around and stood in front of her.
"Your eyes are red," I remarked.
"I've got a cold." She was very haughty.
"Your nose isn't red," I insisted. "And, anyhow, you say you never have a cold."
"I wish you would let me alone, Minnie." She turned her back to me. "I dare say I may have a cold if I wish."
"Do you know what they are saying here?" I demanded. "Do you know that Miss Cobb has found out in some way or other who Mr. von Inwald is? And that the four o'clock gossip edition says your father has given his consent and that you can go and buy a diadem or whatever you are going to wear, right off?"
"Well," she said, in a choked voice, with her back to me, "what of it? Didn't you and Mr. Pierce both do your best to bring it about?"
"Our what?" I couldn't believe my ears.
"You made father well. He's so p—pleasant he'll do anything except leave this awful place!"
"Well, of all the ungrateful people—" I began, and then Mr. Pierce came in. He had a curious way of stopping when he saw her, as if she just took the wind out of his sails, so to speak, and then of whipping off his hat, if anything with sails can wear a hat, and going up to her with his heart in his eyes. He always went straight to her and stopped suddenly about two feet away, trying to think of something ordinary to say. Because the extraordinary thing he wanted to say was always on the end of his tongue.
But this day he didn't light up when he saw her. He went through all the other motions, but his mouth was set in a straight line, and when he came close to her and looked down his eyes were hard.
It's been my experience of men that the younger they are the harder they take things and the more uncompromising they are. It takes a good many years and some pretty hard knocks to make people tolerant.
"I was looking for you," he said to her. "The bishop has just told me. There are no obstacles now."
"None," she said, looking up at him with wretchedness in her eyes, if he had only seen. "I am very happy."
"She was just saying," I said bitterly, "how grateful she was to both of us."
"I don't understand."
"It is not hard to understand," she said, smiling. I wanted to slap her. "Father was unreasonable because he was ill. You have made him well. I can never thank you enough."
But she rather overdid the joy part of it, and he leaned over and looked in her face.
"I think I'm stupid," he said. "I know I'm unhappy. But isn't that what I was to do—to make them well if I could?"
"How could anybody know—" she began angrily, and then stopped. "You have done even more," she said sweetly. "You've turned them into cherubims and seraphims. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Ugh! How I hate amiability raised to the NTH power!"
He smiled. I think it was getting through his thick man's skull that she wasn't so happy as she should have been, and he was thrilled through and through.
"My amiability must be the reason you dislike me!" he suggested. They had both forgotten me.
"Do I dislike you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "I never really thought about it, but I'm sure I don't." She didn't look at him, she looked at me. She knew I knew she lied.
His smile faded.
"Well," he said, "speaking of disliking amiability, you don't hate yourself, I'm sure."
"You are wrong," she retorted, "I loathe myself." And she walked to the window. He took a step or two after her.
"Why do it at all?" he asked in a low tone. "You don't love him—you can't. And if it isn't love—" He remembered me suddenly and stopped.
"Please go on," she said sweetly from the window. "Do not mind Minnie. She is my conscience, anyhow. She is always scolding me; you might both scold in chorus."
"I wouldn't presume to scold."
"Then give me a little advice and look superior and righteous. I'm accustomed to that also."
"As long as you are in this mood, I can't give you anything but a very good day," he said angrily, and went toward the door. But when he had almost reached it he turned.
"I will say this," he said, "you have known for three days that Mr. Thoburn was going to have a supper to-night, and you didn't let us know. You must have known his purpose."
I guess I was as surprised as she was. I'd never suspected she knew.
She looked at him over her shoulder.
"Why shouldn't he have a supper?" she demanded angrily. "I'm starving—we're all starving for decent food. I'm kept here against my will. Why shouldn't I have one respectable meal? You with your wretched stewed fruits and whole-wheat breads! Ugh!"
"I'm sorry. Thoburn's idea, of course, is to make the guests discontented, so they will leave."
"Oh!" she said. She hadn't thought of that, and she flushed. "At least," she said, "you must give me credit for not trying to spoil Dick and Dolly's chance here."
"We are going to allow the party to go on," he said, still stiff and uncompromising. It would have been better if he'd accepted her bit of apology.
"How kind of you! I dare say he would have it, anyhow." She was sarcastic again.
"Probably. And you—will go?"
"Certainly."
"Even when the result—"
"Oh, don't preach!" she said, putting her hands to her ears. "If you and Minnie want to preach, why don't you preach at each other? Minnie talks 'love, love, love.' And you preach health and morality. You drive me crazy between you."
"Suppose," he said with a gleam in his eyes, "suppose I preach 'love, love, love!'"
She put her fingers in her ears again. "Say it to Minnie," she cried, and turned her back to him.
"Very well," he said. "Minnie, Miss Jennings refuses to listen, and there are some things I must say. Once again I am going to register a protest against her throwing herself away in a loveless marriage. I—I feel strongly on the subject, Minnie."
She half turned, as if to interrupt. Then she thought better of it and kept her fingers in her ears, her face flushed. But he had learned what he hoped—that she could hear him.
"You ask me why I feel so strongly, Minnie, and you are right to ask. Under ordinary circumstances, Minnie, any remark of mine on the subject would be ridiculous impertinence."
He stopped and eyed her back, but she did not move.
"It is impertinence under any circumstances, but consider the provocation. I see a young, beautiful and sensitive girl, marrying, frankly without love, a man whom I know to be unworthy, and you ask me to stand aside and allow it to happen!"
"Are you still preaching?" she asked coldly over her shoulder. "It must be a long sermon."
And then, knowing he had only a moment more, his voice changed and became deep and earnest. His hands, that were clutching a chair-back, took a stronger hold, so that the ends of the nails were white.
"You see, Minnie," he said, turning a little pale, "I—I love Miss Jennings myself. You have known it a long time, for you love her, too. It has come to the point that I measure the day by the hours when I can see her. She doesn't care for me; sometimes I think she hates me." He paused here, but Miss Patty didn't move. "I haven't anything to offer a woman except a clean life and the kind of love that a woman could be proud of. I have no title—"
Miss Patty suddenly took her fingers out of her ears and turned around. She was flushed and shaken, but she looked past him without blinking an eyelash to me.
"Dear me," she said, "the sermon must have been exciting, Minnie! You are quite trembly!"
And with that she picked up her muff and went out, with not a glance at him.
He looked at me.
"Well," he said, "THAT'S over. She's angry, Minnie, and she'll never forgive me."
"Stuff!" I snapped, "I notice she waited to hear it all, and no real woman ever hated a man for saying he loved her."
I carried out the supper to the shelter-house as usual that night, but I might have saved myself the trouble. Mrs. Dicky was sitting on a box, with her hair in puffs and the folding card-table before her, and Mr. Dick was uncorking a bottle of champagne with a nail. There were two or three queer-smelling cans open on the table.
Mrs. Dick looked at my basket and turned up her nose.
"Put it anywhere, Minnie," she said loftily, "I dare say it doesn't contain anything reckless."
"Cold ham and egg salad," I said, setting it down with a slam. "Stewed prunes and boiled rice for dessert. If those cans taste as they smell, you'd better keep the basket to fall back on. Where'd you get THAT?" Mr. Dick looked at me over the bottle and winked. "In the next room," he said, "iced to the proper temperature, paid for by somebody else, and coming after a two-weeks' drought! Minnie, there isn't a shadow on my joy!"
"He'll miss it," I said. But Mr. Dick was pouring out three large tumblersful of the stuff, and he held one out to me.
"Miss it!" he exclaimed. "Hasn't he been out three times to-day, tapping his little CACHE? And didn't he bring out Moody and the senator and von Inwald this afternoon, and didn't they sit in the next room there from two to four, roaring songs and cracking bottles and jokes."
"Beasts!" Mrs. Dicky said savagely. "Two hours, and we daren't move!"
"Drink, pretty creature!" Mr. Dick said, motioning to my glass. "Don't be afraid of it, Minnie; it's food and drink."
"I don't like it," I said, sipping at it. "I'd rather have the spring water."
"You'll have to cultivate a taste for it," he explained. "You'll like the second half better."
I got it down somehow and started for the door. Mr. Dick came after me with something that smelled fishy on the end of a fork.
"Better eat something," he suggested. "That was considerable champagne, Minnie."
"Stuff and nonsense," I said. "I was tired and it has rested me. That's all, Mr. Dick."
"Sure?"
"Certainly," I said with dignity, "I'm really rested, Mr. Dick. And happy—I'm very happy, Mr. Dick."
"Perhaps I'd better close the door," he said. "The light may be seen—"
"You needn't close it until I've finished talking," I said. "I've done my best for you and yours, Mr. Dick. I hope you appreciate it. Night after night I've tramped out here through the snow, and lost sleep, and lied myself black in the face—you've no idea how I've had to lie, Mr. Dick."
"Come in and shut the door, Dick," Mrs. Dick called, "I'm freezing."
That made me mad.
"Exactly," I said, glaring at her through the doorway. "Exactly—I can wade through the snow, bringing you meals that you scorn—oh, yes, you scorn them. What did you do to the basket tonight? Look at it, lying there, neglected in a corner, with p—perfectly good ham and stewed fruit in it."
All of a sudden I felt terrible about the way they had treated the basket, and I sat down on the steps and began to cry. I remember that, and Mr. Dick sitting down beside me and putting his arm around me and calling me "good old Minnie," and for heaven's sake not to cry so loud. But I was past caring. I had a sort of recollection of his getting me to stand up, and our walking through about twenty-one miles of snow to the spring-house. When we got there he stood off in the twilight and looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Minnie," he said, "I never dreamed it would do that."
"Do what?"
"Nothing. You're sure you won't forget?"
"I never forget," I said. I had got up the steps by this time and was trying to figure why the spring-house door had two knobs.
I hadn't any idea what he meant.
"Remember," he said, very slowly, "Thoburn is going to have his party to-night instead of to-morrow. Tell Pierce that. To-night, not to-morrow." I was pretty well ashamed when I got in the spring-house and sat down in the dark. I kept saying over and over to myself, so I'd not forget, "tonight, not to-morrow," but I couldn't remember WHAT was to be to-night. I was sleepy, too, and my legs were cold and numb. I remember going into the pantry for a steamer rug, and sitting down there for a minute, with the rug around my knees before I started to the house. And that is all I DO remember.
I was wakened by a terrible hammering in the top of my head. I reached out for the glass of water that I always put beside my bed at night and I touched a door-knob instead. Then I realized that the knocking wasn't all in my head. There was a sort of steady movement of feet on the other side of the door, with people talking and laughing. And above it all rose the steady knock—knock of somebody beating on tin.
"Can't do it." It was the bishop's voice. "I am convinced that nothing but dynamite will open this tin of lobster."
"Just a moment, Bishop," Mr. Thoburn's voice and the clink of bottles, "I have a can opener somewhere. You'll find the sauce a la Newburg—"
"Here, somebody, a glass, quick! A bottle's broken!"
"Did anybody remember to bring salt and pepper?"
"DEAR Mr. Thoburn!" It sounded like Miss Cobb. "Think of thinking of all this!"
"The credit is not mine, dear lady," Mr. Thoburn said. "Where the deuce is that corkscrew? No, dear lady, man makes his own destiny, but his birth date remains beyond his control."
"Ladies and gentlemen," somebody said, "to Mr. Thoburn's birthday being beyond his control!"
There was the clink of glasses, but I had remembered what it had been that I was to remember. And now it was too late. I was trapped in the pantry of my spring-house and Mr. Pierce was probably asleep. I clutched my aching head and tried to think. I was roused by hearing somebody say that Miss Jennings had no glass, and by steps nearing the pantry. I had just time to slip the bolt.
"Pantry's locked!" said a voice.
"Drat that Minnie!" somebody else said. "The girl's a nuisance."
"Hush!" Miss Summers said. "She's probably in there now—taking down what we say and what we eat. Convicting us out of our own mouths."
I held my breath and the knob rattled. Then they found a glass for Miss Patty and forgot the pantry.
Under cover of the next burst of noises I tried the pantry window, but it was frozen shut. Nothing but a hammer would have loosened it. I began to dig at it with a wire hairpin, but I hadn't much hope.
The fun in the spring-house was getting fast and furious. Miss Summers was leaning against the pantry door and I judged that most of the men in the room were around her, as usual. I put my ear to the panel of the door, and I could pretty nearly see what was going on. They were toasting Mr. Thoburn, and getting hungrier every minute as the supper was put out on the card-tables.
"To the bottle!" somebody said. "In infancy, the milk bottle; in our prime, the wine bottle; in our dotage, the pill bottle."
Mr. von Inwald came over and stood beside Miss Summers, and I could hear every whisper.
"I have good news for you," she said in an undertone.
"Oh! And what?"
"Sh! You may recall," she said, "the series of notes, letters, epistles, with which you have been honoring me lately?"
"How could I forget? They were written in my heart's blood!"
"Indeed!" Her voice lifted its eyebrows, so to speak. "Well, somebody got in my room last night and stole I dare say a pint of your heart's blood. They're gone."
He was pretty well upset, as he might be, and she stood by and listened to the things he said, which, if they were as bad in English as they sounded in German, I wouldn't like to write down.
And when he cooled down and condensed, as you may say, into English, he said Miss Jennings must have seen the letters, for she would hardly speak to him. And Miss Summers said she hoped Miss Jennings had—she was too nice a girl to treat shamefully.
And after he had left her there alone, I heard a sort of scratching on the door behind Miss Summers' back, and then something being shoved under the door. I stooped down and picked it up. It was a key!
I struck a match, and I saw by the tag that it was the one to the old doctor's rooms. I knew right off what it meant. Mr. Pierce had gone to bed, or pretended to throw them off the track and Thoburn had locked him in! Thoburn hadn't taken any chances. He knew the influence Mr. Pierce had over them all, and he and his champagne and tin cans had to get in their work before Mr. Pierce had another chance at them.
I had no time to wonder how Miss Summers knew I was in the pantry. I tried the window again, but it wouldn't work. Somebody in the spring-house was shouting, "'Hot butter blue beans, please come to supper!'" and I could hear them crowding around the tables. I worked frantically with the hairpin, and just then two shadowy figures outside slipped around the corner of the building. It was Mr. Pierce and Doctor Barnes!
I darted back and put my ear to the door, but they did not come in at once. Mr. Thoburn made a speech, saying how happy he was that they were all well and able to go back to civilization again, where the broiled lobster flourished like a green bay tree and the prune and the cabbage were unknown.
There was loud applause, and then Senator Biggs cleared his throat.
"Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished fellow guests," he began, "I suggest a toast to the autocrat of Hope Springs. It is the only blot on the evening, that, owing to the exigencies of the occasion, he can not be with us. Securely fastened in his room, he is now sleeping the sleep that follows a stomach attuned to prunes, a mind attuned to rule."
"Eat, drink and be merry!" somebody said, "for to-morrow you diet!"
There was a swish and rustle, as if a woman got up in a hurry.
"Do you mean," said Miss Patty's clear voice, "that you have dared to lock Mr. Pier—Mr. Carter in his room?"
"My dear young lady," several of them began, but she didn't give them time.
"It is outrageous, infamous!" she stormed. I didn't need to see her to know how she looked.
"How DARE you! Suppose the building should catch fire!"
"Fire!" somebody said in a bewildered voice. "My dear young lady—"
"Don't 'my dear young lady' me," she said angrily. "Father, Bishop, will you stand for this? Why, he may jump out the window and hurt himself! Give me the key!"
Miss Julia's fingers were beating a tatoo behind her, as if she was afraid I might miss it.
"If he jumps out he probably will hurt himself. It is impossible to release him now, Miss Jennings, but if you insist we can have a mattress placed under the window."
"Thanks, Thoburn. It won't be necessary." The voice came from the door, and a hush fell on the party. I slipped my bolt and peeped out. Framed in the doorway was Mr. Pierce, with Doctor Barnes looking over his shoulder.
The people in the spring-house were abject. That's the only word for it. Craven, somebody suggested later, and they were that, too. They smiled sickly grins and tried to be defiant, and most of them tried to put down whatever they held in their hands and to look innocent. If you ever saw a boy when his school-teacher asks him what he has in his mouth, and multiply the boy thirty times in number and four times in size, you'll know how they looked.
Mr. Pierce never smiled. He wouldn't let them speak a word in defense or explanation. He simply lined them up as he did at gym, and sent them, one by one, to the corner with whatever they had in their hands. He made Mr. Jennings give up a bottle of anchovies that he'd stuffed in his pocket, and the bishop had to come over with a cheese.
And when it was all over, he held the door open and they went back to the house. They fairly ducked past him in the doorway, although he hadn't said a dozen words. It was a rout. The backbone of the rebellion was broken. I knew that never again would the military discipline of Hope Springs be threatened. Thoburn might as well pack and go. It was Mr. Pierce's day.
Mr. von Inwald was almost the last. He stood by, sneering, with an open bottle of olives in his hand, watching the others go out.
Mr. Pierce held the door open and eyed him.
"I'll trouble you to put that bottle with the others, in the corner," Mr. Pierce said sternly.
They stood glaring at each other angrily.
"And if I refuse?"
"You know the rules here. If you refuse, there is a hotel at Finleyville."
Mr. von Inwald glanced past Mr. Pierce to where Doctor Barnes stood behind him, with his cauliflower ear and his pugilist's shoulders. Then he looked at the bottle in his hand, and from it to Miss Patty, standing haughtily by.
"I have borne much for you, Patricia," he said, "but I refuse to be bullied any longer. I shall go to the hotel at Finleyville, and I shall take the little olives with me." He smiled unpleasantly at Mr. Pierce, whose face did not relax.
He walked jauntily to the door and turned, flourishing the bottle. "The land of the free and the home of the brave!" he sneered, raising the bottle in the air. Standing jeering in the doorway, he bowed to Miss Patty and Mr. Pierce, and put an olive into his mouth.
But instantly he made a terrible face, and clapped a hand just in front of his left ear. He stood there a moment, his face distorted—then he darted into the night, and I never saw him again.
"Mumps!" Doctor Barnes ejaculated, and stood staring after him from the steps.