Vagabondia Part 34

"Thin!" said Dolly. "Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that _I_ should grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia Howland's, Phemie?" And she ended with a little laugh.

Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.

"Oh, dear, no!" she said. "They could n't, you know. They are not the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look here," and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand without the ring. "There are no dimples here now, Dolly," she said, sorrowfully.

"No," answered Dolly, simply; and the next minute, as she drew her hand away, there fluttered from her lips a sigh.

She managed to change the turn of conversation after this. Miss MacDowlas had good-naturedly left them alone, and so she began to ask Phemie questions,--questions about school and lessons and companions, about the lady princ.i.p.al and the under-teachers and about the professor with the lumpy face; and, despite appearances being against her, there was still the old ring in her girl's jests.

"Has madame got a new bonnet yet," she asked, "or does she still wear the old one with those aggressive-looking spikes of wheat in it? The lean ears ought to have eaten up the fat ones by this time."

"But they have n't," returned Phemie. "They are there yet, Dolly. Just the same spikes in the same bonnet, only she has had new saffron-colored ribbon put on it, just the shade of her skin."

Dolly shuddered,--Lady Augusta's own semi-tragic shudder, if Phemie had only recognized it.

"Phemie," she said, with a touch of pardonable anxiety, "ill as I look, I am not that color, am I? To lose one's figure and grow thin is bad enough, but to become like Madame Pillet--dear me!" shaking her head. "I scarcely think I could reconcile myself to existence."

Phemie laughed. "You are not changed in one respect, Dolly," she said.

"When I hear you talk it makes me feel quite--quite safe."

"Safe!" Dolly echoed. "You mean to say that so long as I preserve my const.i.tutional vanity, your anxiety won't overpower you. But--but,"

looking at her curiously, "did you think at first that I was not safe, as you call it?"

"You looked so ill," faltered Phemie. "And--I was so startled."

"Were you?" asked Dolly. "Did I shock you?"

"A little--only just a little, dear," deprecatingly.

Then strangely enough fell upon them a silence. Dolly turned toward the window, and her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon some far-away point, as if she was pondering over a new train of thought. And when at last she spoke, her voice was touched with the tremulous unsteadiness of tears.

"Do you think," she said, slowly,--"do you think that _any one_ who had loved me would be shocked to see me now? Am I so much altered as that? One scarcely sees these things one's self,--they come to pa.s.s so gradually."

All poor Phemie's smiles died away.

"Don't let us talk about it," she pleaded. "I cannot bear to hear you speak so. Don't, dear--if you please, don't!"

Her pain was so evident that it roused Dolly at once.

"I won't, if it troubles you," she said, almost in her natural manner.

"It does not matter,--why should it? There is no one here to be shocked.

I was only wondering."

But the shadow did not quite leave her face, and even when, an hour later, Euphemia bade her good-by and left her, promising to return again as soon as possible, it was there still.

She was very, very quiet for a few minutes after she found herself alone. She clasped her hands behind her head, and lay back in the light chair, looking out of the window. She was thinking so deeply that she did not even stir for a while; but in the end she got up, as though moved by some impulse, and crossed the room.

Against the wall hung a long, narrow mirror, and she went to this mirror and stood before it, looking at herself from head to foot,--at her piteously sharpened face, with its large, wondering eyes, eyes that wondered at themselves,--at the small, light figure so painfully etherealized, and about which the white wrapper hung so loosely. She even held up, at last, the slender hand and arm; but when she saw these uplifted, appealing, as it were, for this sad, new face which did not seem her own, she broke into a little cry of pain and grief.

"If you could see me now," she said, "if you should come here by chance and see me now, my dear, I think you would not wait to ask whether I had been true or false. I never laid this white cheek on your shoulder, did I? Oh, what a changed face it is! I know I was never very pretty, though you thought so and were proud of me in your tender way, but I was not like this in those dear old days. Grif, Grif, would you know me,--would you _know_ me?" And, turning to her chair again, she dropped upon her knees before it, and knelt there sobbing.

CHAPTER XVI. ~ IF YOU SHOULD DIE.

THE postman paid frequent visits to Bloomsbury Place during these summer weeks. At first Dolly wrote often herself, but later it seemed to fall to Miss MacDowlas to answer Aimee's weekly letters and Mollie's fortnightly ones. And that lady was a faithful correspondent, and did her duty as readily as was possible, giving all the news, and recording all Dolly's messages, and issuing regular bulletins on the subject of her health. "Your sister," she sometimes wrote, "is not so well, and I have persuaded her to allow me to be her amanuensis." Or, "Your sister is tired after a rather long drive, and I have persuaded her to rest while I write at her dictation." Or sometimes, "Dolly is rather stronger, and is in excellent spirits, but I do not wish her to exert herself at present." But at length a new element crept into these letters. The cheerful tone gave way to a more dubious one; Dolly's whimsical messages were fewer and farther between, and sometimes Miss MacDowlas seemed to be on the verge of hinting that her condition was a weaker and more precarious one than even she herself had at first feared.

Ralph Gowan, on making his friendly calls, and hearing this, was both anxious and puzzled. In a very short time after his return he had awakened to a recognition of some mysterious shadow upon the household.

Vagabondia had lost its spirits. Mrs. Phil and her husband were almost thoughtful; Tod disported himself unregarded and unadmired, comparatively speaking; Mollie seemed half frightened by the aspect affairs were wearing; and Aimee's wise, round face had an older look.

And then these letters! Dolly "trying Switzerland" for her health, Dolly mysteriously ill and far away from home,--too weak sometimes to write.

Dolly, who had never seemed to have a weakness; who had entered the lists against even Lady Augusta, and had come off victorious; who had been mock-worldly, and coquettish, and daring; who had made open onslaught upon eligible Philistines; who had angled prettily and with sinful success for ineligible Bohemians! What did it mean? And where was Donne? Certainly he was never to be seen at Bloomsbury Place or in its vicinity in these days.

But, deeply interested as he was, Gowan was not the man to ask questions; so he could only wait until chance brought the truth to light.

He came to the house upon one occasion and found Aimee crying quietly over one of Miss MacDowlas's letters in the parlor, and in his sympathy he felt compelled to speak openly to her.

Then Aimee, heavy of heart and full of despairing grief, handed him the letter to read.

"I have known it would be so--from the first," she sobbed. "We are going to lose her. Perhaps she will not live to come home again."

"You mean Dolly?" he said.

"Yes," hysterically. "Miss MacDowlas says--" But she could get no further.

This was what Miss MacDowlas said:--

"I cannot think it would be right to hide from you that your sister is very ill, though she does not complain, and persists in treating her increasing weakness lightly. Indeed, I am sure that she herself does not comprehend her danger. I am inclined to believe that it has not yet occurred to her that she is in danger at all. She protests that she cannot be ill so long as she does not suffer; but I, who have watched her day by day, can see only too plainly where the danger lies. And so I think it best to warn you to be prepared to come to us at once if at any time I should send for you hurriedly."

"Prepared to go to them!" commented Aimee. "What does that mean? What can it mean but that our own Dolly is dying, and may slip out of the world away from us at any moment? Oh, Grif! Grif! what have you done?"

Gowan closed the letter.

"Miss Aimee," he said, "where _is_ Donne?"

Aimee fairly wrung her hands.

"I don't know," she quite wailed. "If I only did--if I only knew where I could find him!"

"You don't know!" exclaimed Gowan. "And Dolly dying in Switzerland!"

"That is it," she returned. "That is what it all means. If any of us knew--or if Dolly knew, she would not be dying in Switzerland. It is because she does not know, that she is dying. She has never seen him since the night you brought Mollie home. And--and she cannot live without him."

The whole story was told in very few words after this; and Gowan, listening, began to understand what the cloud upon the house had meant.

He suffered some sharp enough pangs through the discovery, too. The last frail cords that had bound him to hope snapped as Aimee poured out her sorrows. He had never been very sanguine of success, but even after hoping against hope, his tender fancy for Dolly Crewe had died a very lingering death; indeed, it was not quite dead yet, but he was beginning to comprehend this old love story more fully, and he had found himself forced to do his rival greater justice. He could not see his virtues as the rest saw them, of course, but he was generous enough to pity him, and see that his lot had been a terribly hard one.

"There is only one thing to be done," he said, when Aimee had finished speaking. "We must find him."