Where There's a Will Part 11

I think she thought I was crazy: I looked it. She hopped out of bed and closed the door into her sitting-room--Mrs. Hutchins' room opened off it--and then she came over and put her hand on my arm.

"Will you sit down and try to tell me just what you mean?" she said.

"How can my sister and her--her wretch of a husband have come last night at midnight when I saw Mr. Carter myself not later than ten o'clock?"

Well, I had to tell her then about who Mr. Pierce was and why I had to get him, and she understood almost at once. She was the most understanding girl I ever met. She saw at once what Mr. Sam wouldn't have known in a thousand years--that I wanted to save the old place not to keep my position--but because I'd been there so long, and my father before me, and had helped to make it what it was and all that. And she stood there in her nightgown--she who was almost a princess--and listened to me, and patted me on the shoulder when I broke down, telling her about Thoburn and the summer hotel.

"But here I am," I finished, "telling you about my troubles and forgetting what I came for. You'll have to go out to the shelter-house, Miss Patty. And I guess you're expected to fix it up with your father."

She stopped unfastening her long braids of hair.

"Certainly I'll go to the shelter-house," she said, "and I'll shake a little sense into Dorothy Jennings--the abominable little idiot! But they needn't think I'm going to help them with father; I wouldn't if I could, and I can't. He won't speak to me. I'm in disgrace, Minnie." She gave her hair a shake, twisted it into a rope and then a knot, and stuck a pin in it. It was lovely: I wish Miss Cobb could have seen her.

"You've known father for years, Minnie: have you ever known him to be so--so--"

"Devilish" was the word she meant, but I finished for her.

"Unreasonable?" I said. "Well, once before when you were a little girl, he put his cane through a window in the spring-house, because he thought it needed air. The spring-house, of course, not the cane."

"Exactly," she said, looking around the room, "and now he's putting a cane through every plan I have made. Do you see my heavy boots?"

"It's like this," I remarked, bringing the boots from outside the door, "if he's swallowed the prince and is choking on the settlement question he might as well get over it. All those foreigners expect pay for taking a wife. Didn't the chef here want to marry Tillie, the diet cook, and didn't he want her to turn over the three hundred dollars she had in the bank, and her real estate, which was a sixth interest in a cemetery lot?

But Tillie stuck it out and he wouldn't take her without."

"It isn't quite the same, Minnie," she said, sitting down on the floor to put on her stockings.

"The principle's the same," I retorted, "and if you ask me--"

"I haven't," she said disagreeably, "and when you begin to argue, Minnie, you make my head ache."

"I have had a heartache for a week," I snapped, "let alone heartburn, and I'll be glad when the Jennings family is safely married and I can sleep at night."

I was hurt. I went out and shut the door behind me, but I stopped in the hall and went back.

"I forgot to say," I began, and stopped. She was still sitting on the floor, trying to put her heavy boots on, and crying all over them.

"Stop that instantly," I said, and jerked her shoes from her. "Get into a chair and let me put them on. And if you will wait a jiffy I'll bring you a cup of coffee. I'm not even a Christian in the morning until I've had my coffee."

"You haven't had it yet, have you?" she asked, and we laughed together, rather shaky. But as I b.u.t.toned her shoes I saw her eyes going toward the blue letters on the bed.

"Oh, Minnie," she said, "if you only knew how peculiar they are in Europe! They'll never allow a sanatorium in the family!"

"I guess a good many would be the better for having one close," I said.

Well, I left her to get dressed and went to the kitchens. Tillie was there getting the beef tea ready for the day, but none of the rest was around. They knew the housekeeper was gone, but I guess they'd forgotten that I was still on hand. I put a kettle against the electric bell that rings in the chef's room so it would keep on ringing and went on into the diet kitchen.

"Tillie," I said, "can you trust me?"

She looked up from her beef.

"Whether I can or not, I always have," she answered.

"Well, can I trust you? That's more to the point."

She put down her knife and came over to me, with her hands on her hips.

"I don't know what you're up to, Minnie," she said, "and I don't know that I care. But if you've forgotten the time I went to the city and brought you sulphur and the Lord only knows what for your old spring when you'd run short and were laid up with influenza--"

"Hus.h.!.+" I exclaimed. "You needn't shout it. Tillie, I don't want you to ask me any questions, but I want four raw eggs in a basket, a pot of coffee and cream, some fruit if you can get it when the chef unlocks the refrigerator room, and bread and b.u.t.ter. They can make their own toast."

"They?" she said, with her mouth open.

But I didn't explain any more. I had found Tillie about a year before, frying sausages at the railroad station, and made her diet cook at the sanatorium. Mrs. Wiggins hadn't wanted her, but, as I told the old doctor at the time, we needed somebody in the kitchen to keep an eye on things for us. It was through Tillie that we discovered that the help were having egg-nog twice a day, with eggs as scarce as hens' teeth, and the pharmacy clerk putting in a requisition for more whisky every week.

Well, I scribbled a note to Mr. Van Alstyne, telling what had happened, and put it under his door, and then I met Miss Patty in the hall by the billiard room and I gave her some coffee from the basket, in the sun parlor. It was still dark, although it was nearly eight o'clock, and n.o.body saw us go out together. Just as we left I heard the chef in the kitchen bawling out that he'd murder whoever put the kettle against the bell, and Tillie saying it must have dropped off the hook and landed there.

We went to the spring-house first, to avoid suspicion, and then across back of the deer park to the shelter-house. It was still snowing, but not so much, and the tracks we had made early in the morning were still there, mine off to one side alone, and the others close together and side by side. There was a whole history in those snow tracks, mine alone and kind of offish, and the others cuddling together. It made me lonely to look at them.

I remember wis.h.i.+ng I'd taught school, as I was educated to; woman wasn't made to live alone, and most school-teachers get married.

Miss Patty did not say much. She was holding her chin high and looking rather angry and determined. At the spring-house I gave her the basket and took an armful of fire-wood myself. I knew Mr. d.i.c.k would never think of it until the fire was out.

They were both asleep in the shelter-house. He was propped up against the wall on a box, with the rubber carriage robe around him, and she was lying by the fire, with Mrs. Moody's shawl over her and her m.u.f.f under her head. Miss Patty stood in the doorway for an instant. Then she walked over and, leaning down, shook her sister by the arm.

"Dorothy!" she said. "Wake up, you wretched child!" And shook her again.

Mrs. d.i.c.ky groaned and yawned, and opened her eyes one at a time.

But when she saw it was Miss Patty she sat up at once, looking dazed and frightened.

"You needn't pinch me, Pat!" she said, and at that Mr. d.i.c.k wakened and jumped up, with the carriage robe still around him.

"Oh, Dolly, Dolly!" said Miss Patty suddenly, dropping on her knees beside Mrs. d.i.c.ky, "what a bad little girl you are! What a thing for you to do! Think of father and Aunt Honoria!"

"I shan't," retorted Mrs. d.i.c.ky decidedly. "I'm not going to spoil my honeymoon like that. For heaven's sake, Pat, don't cry. I'm not dead.

d.i.c.k, this is my sister, Patricia."

Miss Pat looked at him, but she didn't bow. She gave him one look, from his head to his heels.

"Dolly, how COULD you!" she said, and got up.

It wasn't very comfortable for Mr. d.i.c.k, but he took it much better than I expected. He went over and gave his wife a hand to help her up, and still holding hers, he turned to Miss Patty.

"You are perfectly right," he said, "I don't see how she could myself.

The more you know of me the more you'll wonder. But she did; we're up against that."

He grinned at Miss Patty, and after a minute Miss Patty smiled back. But it wasn't much of a smile. I was unpacking the breakfast, putting the coffee-pot on the fire and getting ready to cook the eggs and make toast. But I was watching, too. Suddenly Mrs. d.i.c.k made a dive for Miss Patty and threw her arms around her.

"You darling!" she cried. "I'm so glad to see you again--Pat, you'll tell father, won't you? He'll take it from you. If I tell him he'll have apoplexy or something."

But Miss Patty set her pretty mouth--both those girls have their father's mouth--and held her sister out at arm's length and looked at her.