At the Crossroads Part 26

She believed that Brace was still at that place from which the letter came! She was fiendishly subject to impressions and suspicions.

"Now if he is still there"--thoughts ran like liquid fire in Kathryn's brain--"_why_ does he stay? It isn't far." She had made sure of that by road maps when the letter first came. "I could motor out there and see!" The liquid fire brought colour to the girl's face.

She was dramatic, too, she could always see herself playing the leading parts in emotional situations. Just now, like more flashes of lightning, disclosing vivid scenes, she saw herself, prostrated by fear and anxiety for Helen Northrup, finding Brace, confiding in him because she dared not take the chances of silence and dared not disobey and go to Doctor Manly.

Brace would be fear-filled and remorseful, would see at last how she, Kathryn, had his interests in mind. He would cling to her. Sitting close by the couch, her face pressed to Helen Northrup's shoulder, Kathryn contemplated the alluring and pa.s.sionate scenes. Brace had always lacked pa.s.sion. She had always to hold Arnold virtuously in check, but Brace was able to control himself. But--and here the vivid pictures reeled on, familiarity had dulled things, long engagements were flattening--Brace would at last see her as she was. She'd forgive anything that might have happened--of course, anything _might_ have happened--she, a woman of the world, understood.

And--Kathryn was brought to a sudden halt--the reel spun on but there was no picture!

Suppose, after all, there was nothing really to be frightened about in these attacks? Well, that would be found out after Brace had been brought home and might enhance rather than detract from--her divine devotion.

Presently Kathryn became aware of the fact that Helen Northrup had been speaking while the reel reeled!

"And then that escapade of his when he was only seven." Helen patted the golden head beside her while her thoughts were back with her boy.

"He was walking with me when suddenly he looked up; his poor little face was all twisted! He just said rather impishly, 'I'm going! I am really!' and he went! I was, naturally, frightened, and ran after him--then, when I caught sight of him, a long way ahead, I stopped and waited. When he thought I was not following, he waded right out into a puddle; he even had a sc.r.a.ppy fight with a bigger boy who contested his right to invade the puddle. It was so absurd. Kathryn, I actually went home; I felt sure Brace would find his way back and he did. I was nearly wild with anxiety, but I waited. He came back disgustingly dirty, but hilariously happy. He expected punishment. When none was meted out to him--he told me all about it--it seemed flat enough when he saw how I took it. Why, I never even mentioned the mud on him. He was disappointed, but I think he understood more than I realized. When he went to bed that night, he begged my pardon!"

Kathryn got up and walked about the room. She was staging another drama. Brace was now playing in puddles--not such simple ones as those of his childhood. He was having his little fight, too, possibly; with whom?

Well, how perfectly thrilling to save him!

Such a girl as Kathryn has as cheap an imagination as any lurid factory girl, but it is kept as safely from sight as the contents of her vanity bag.

"Kathryn, have you heard from Brace?"

The girl started almost guiltily. Helen hated to ask this, she feared Kathryn might think her envious; but Kathryn rose and drew a chair to the couch.

"No, dearie-dear," she said sweetly.

"So you don't know just where he is?"

"How could I know, dearie thing?"

So they were not keeping things from her; shutting her out! Helen Northrup raised her head from the pillow.

"We're in the same boat, darling," she said, so glad to be in the same boat. "Lately I've had a few whim-whams." Helen felt she could be confidential. "I suppose I am touching the outer circle of old age, and before it blinds me, I'm going to have my say. It would be just like you and Brace to forget yourselves and think of me. And if I do not look out, I'll be taking your sacrifice and calling it by its wrong name. You and Brace must marry. I half believe you've been waiting for me to push you out of the nest. Well, here you go! Your own nest will be sacred to me, another place for me to go to, another interest. I'll be having you both closer. Now, don't cry, little girl.

I've found you out and found myself, too!"

Kathryn was shedding tears--tears of grat.i.tude for the material Helen was putting at her disposal.

"My dear little Kathryn! It is going to be all right, all right. Why, childie, when he comes home I am going to insist upon the wedding. I am not a young woman, really, though I put up a bit of a bluff--and the time isn't very long, no matter how you look at it--so, darling, you and Brace must humour me, do the one big thing to make me happy--you must be married!"

Kathryn looked up. The tears hung to her long lashes.

"You want this?" she faltered with quivering lips.

Helen believed she understood at last.

"My darling!" she said tenderly, "it is the one great longing of my heart."

Then she dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes while the pain gripped her. But the pain, for a moment, seemed a friend, not a foe.

It might be the thing that would open the door--out.

Helen had spoken truth as truth should be but never quite is, to a mother. She had taken her place in the march, her colours flying. But her place was the mother's place, lagging in the rear.

Such an effort as she had just made caused angels to weep over her.

CHAPTER X

By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin's att.i.tude toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty conscience is never a sleeping one.

The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different matter.

"I'll bet my last dollar," Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last dollar was a thing of the past, "that this young feller will find out about those inventions. Inventions be d.a.m.ned! That's what I say.

There's something going on at the mines that don't spell inventions."

This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of unaccustomed excitement.

"When he lands Maclin," she said savagely, "I'll grab Larry. Larry is a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer"--she gave a deep sigh--"how a stick muddling up a biling brings the sc.u.m to the surface! I declare! I wish we had something to grip hold of.

Suspicioning your neighbours ain't healthy."

Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup's side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced, much to Peneluna's horror:

"Supposin' we are goin' ter h.e.l.l 'long of not knowin' where we are goin', ain't it a lot pleasanter than the way we was traipsin' before things began to happen?"

Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince matters in her own thoughts.

"Larry stole 'em!" she had concluded from the first. "What's old letters, anyway? But I'll get those letters if I die for it!"

She shamelessly ransacked Larry's possessions while she cleaned his disorderly shack, but no letters did she find. She became irritable and unmoral.

"Lordy!" she confided to Peneluna one day while they were preparing Larry's food, "don't yer wish, Peneluna, that it wasn't evil to poison some folks' grub?"

Peneluna paused and looked at the girl with startled eyes.

"If you talk like that," she replied, "I'll hustle you into the almshouse." Then: "Who would you like to do that to?" she asked.

"Oh! folks as just clutter up life for decent folks. Maclin and Larry."

"Now, see here, Jan-an, that kind of talk is downright creepy and terrible wicked. Listen to me. Are you listening?"

Jan-an nodded sullenly.

"I'm your best friend, child. I mean to stand by yer, so you just heed. There are folks as can use language like that and others will laugh it off, but you can't do it. The best thing for you to do is to slip along out of sight and sound as much as yer can. If you attract attention--the Lord above knows what will happen; I don't."

Jan-an was impressed.