CHAPTER IX.

It was raining; not spasmodically, with a suggestion of lifting skies between frenzied outbursts, but steadily, drearily, insistently. Jane, sitting up in bed, drew the down coverlet cozily about her bare neck and half-clad arms, while she despondently looked out through the window at the dripping landscape.

“Rain is bad enough in the city,” she mused, “but it’s simply impossible in the country. There, at least, you can get away from it, but here it seems to be all over.” There was a tap on the door.

“Come,” she called, and a maid entered with an appetizing breakfast on a tray. “Good-morning, Blanche,” said Jane. “Tell me what you do on a rainy day. You and Johnson won’t be able to walk out this evening.”

“We sits in the kitchen, miss,” said the little maid, primly, blushing to the roots of her mouse-colored hair. “Cook goes to bed early.”

“Very obliging of cook,” commented Jane, as she sipped her coffee. “And that reminds me, Blanche, I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me truthfully. Are you trifling with Johnson?”

“Me, miss?” The maid’s face grew redder than ever, but she tossed her head. “I’m not triflin’. Mr. Johnson keeps a-sayin’ as how he’s very fond o’ me, but I tells ’im he’s a city chap and says the same to all th’ gurls.”

“You’re right, Blanche, all the Johnsons are a bad lot,” said Jane, pessimistically. “However”--for the little maid’s face looked suddenly downcast--“I believe Johnson is one of the best of them, and that his intentions are serious.” The maid beamed. “And I would feel sorry to have you trifle with him, because I feel responsible for him while he’s down here. Avoid the reputation of being a flirt, Blanche.” Jane looked pensive. “It’s the hardest in the world to live down.”

“Yes’m,” said the maid, politely. “Is there anythink I can do for you?” She adored Jane, and spent hours trying to do her hair the way Mrs. De Mille did hers.

“No, I think not. Have the Willoughbys had breakfast?”

“Hours ago, miss,” answered Blanche. Jane smiled. This breakfast in bed represented one of her most memorable victories over Aunt Susan, and imparted a particularly delicious flavor to her coffee and rolls.

“Well, take the tray; I’ll get up in an hour or so,” said Jane, deliberately composing herself for another nap.

She dreamed of the bungalow and of Ormsby, and, when she finally dressed, it was with the defeated feeling of one who has striven hard to put certain thoughts out of her head, but who finds that they have taken possession even of her dreams.

She saw Uncle Jacob and Aunt Susan for the first time at the luncheon table. The rain was still falling with what Jane called disgusting pertinacity.

“Of course you’re not going out a day like this,” said Mrs. Willoughby, in the disapproving voice she seemed to reserve for Jane and her husband. By “out” she meant the bungalow. Until Aunt Susan had spoken, Mrs. De Mille had made up her mind that a visit to the bungalow on such a day was out of the question, and that Ormsby would not expect her. Now, however, she found herself saying, perversely: “Out! Of course I’m going out. A woman who works for a living cannot afford to mind a little rain. I have an appointment at the bungalow with Mr. Ormsby, and I have to keep it.”

Aunt Susan sniffed. “The neighbors are commenting----”

Jane held up a reproachful finger. “No gossip, aunt!” she said, rebukingly. “Don’t you think that living in the country has a tendency--_just a slight tendency_--to make people too deeply interested in their neighbors’ affairs?” Jane looked excessively virtuous. “I’d hate, Aunt Susan, to have you degenerate. But one has to be _so_ careful!”

Mrs. Willoughby deigned no response, and finished the meal in stony silence. Uncle Jacob, who found himself unable to carry on a peaceful conversation with Jane and his wife both present, stealthily perused the columns of a belated city paper he held on his knee.

Immediately after her luncheon, Jane went to her room and got together her rainy-day things. When she sallied forth presently, she wore a coquettish-looking cap, a short, mannish coat and a skirt that was short enough to reveal not only a pair of the thinnest and most absurdly small Louis Quinze shoes, but a good bit of thin silk stocking as well. Jane, as she tripped along, surveyed her feet ruefully. “I know he’ll say something sarcastic about my shoes,” she mused, “and they are ridiculous for a day like this, and I’ve no doubt they do show I haven’t a scrap of common sense--though I know women who never wear anything but common-sense shoes who haven’t any common sense to boast of. It’s simply a question of whether you’re athletic or not. Besides, I can explain to him that I really did try to wear a pair of Blanche’s, but they slipped off when they were buttoned up, and he’ll have to admit that it’s much better for me to arrive at the bungalow in my own shoes, even though they’re more ridiculous, than in my stocking feet--which would have been the case had I worn Blanche’s. I’ll tell----” Jane pulled herself up sharp with a sudden, angry flush. “I don’t know,” she said out loud, sharply, “why you’re always trying to placate him, Jane De Mille! Where’s your independence gone to?” Then she fixed her eyes firmly on the distant horizon and her thoughts on a new summer gown and marched independently on.

To find the bungalow locked was like a blow to her, and when she faced about to return home she felt suddenly very cold, very wet, very miserable and very forlorn. Then she recollected that he had told her once that there was always a key under the mat in case she should come to the bungalow when he wasn’t there, and, reluctant to return to the dreariness of the Willoughby house, she searched for this, and, finding it, thrust it in the keyhole and opened the door. There was no fire in the fireplace, but there was material for one beside it, and, kneeling down in front of the cavernous opening, Jane laboriously constructed one and held out her hands gratefully to the warmth when the flames darted forth. She surveyed the room over her shoulder and was chilled afresh by its deserted air. “Can he have gone away without a word?” she wondered, and paled at the thought.

“It’s no use denying you’re in a very bad way about this Ormsby, Jane De Mille,” she reflected, pensively surveying the dancing flames. “You’re rapidly losing all your independence, and, what’s worse, your self-respect. And you haven’t the remotest reason for believing that he cares a scrap for you.”

She rose presently, and, moving his chair over to the fireplace, sat down in it and held out first one and then the other little high-heeled boot to dry. “If he loved me,” she observed to herself, “I really wouldn’t mind wearing thick soles and low heels.”

Her shoes dry, she began to move restlessly about the room. Now, it is a curious fact that Jane had never expressed and never felt any curiosity about the book Ormsby was writing, though she knew that she was furnishing the material for the heroine. In spite of herself, almost unconsciously, indeed, at first, she had become so absorbed in the writer that the book became of secondary importance. Today, however, his absence made everything that was intimately associated with him of interest to her, since they served, in a way, as a substitute for him. She picked up his pipe and held it caressingly against her cheek, and then, with a guilty start, set it down again. She dropped her head on an open book he had evidently been reading, and her eyes were dewy when she raised it. She came upon, finally, the bundle of papers he had tossed contemptuously on the table the night before, and recognized it as the manuscript upon which he had been working. She regarded it thoughtfully for a while and then her face brightened.

“Why, how stupid of me!” she exclaimed, aloud, and, going back to his chair, she seated herself in it once more and smoothed out the sheets.

“He can’t possibly object to my reading it,” she reasoned, “since I’m in it, and it’s soon to be public property.” She stared at the title. “‘A Woman,’” she read aloud--“that’s me, I suppose. Why”--with an odd, breathless little laugh--“it will be exactly like seeing for the first time a portrait done of yourself by some great painter--one of those artists who pay more attention to the soul than to the hair or the mouth or the eyes. I’ll see myself as somebody else sees me. It’s--it’s going to be terribly exciting.”

Yet, in spite of the curiosity she professed, Jane did not begin at once to read. Instead, she dropped the manuscript in her lap and stared for a while into the fire, her chin propped on her hand. Her thoughts ran on something like this: “You’ve never had such an awfully good time, Jane De Mille, though you’ve put up what Billie would call a pretty stiff bluff. You’ve never had anybody to really and truly care for you, unless it be Uncle Jacob, though plenty of people have admired you for what good looks you have or because you didn’t bore them. But if you should _discover_ that somebody loved you for yourself alone, thought you a little better, perhaps, than you really are, you know--why, it’s just possible----” A catch in her breath put a stop to her reflections, and she unrolled the manuscript and began to read.

The fire was dying down, but, tenacious of life as some very old man who has prolonged his years through will power alone, it shot forth unexpected flames at infrequent intervals. These lighted up Jane’s face, and such changes did they reveal with each succeeding appearance that they might have been the withering years. The patter of the rain on the roof, the rustle of the sheets as they fell from her hand and fluttered to the floor, the occasional sputter of the fire--these for the next two hours were the only sounds heard in the bungalow. When the last page joined the others that lay scattered about in disorder on the floor, Mrs. De Mille stared for a few seconds straight ahead of her, and then, with a quivering sigh, buried her head on the arm of the chair and began to cry.

* * * * *

It lacked half an hour of dinner time, and Jacob Willoughby sat alone in the stuffy library. The owner of Willoughby Hall was not what could be called sentimental, but in the twilight hour, and especially when the weather necessitated an open fire, he was apt, if Susan Willoughby was in a remote part of the house, to let his thoughts stray back to a time when she was not, so far as Jacob Willoughby was concerned, and when a slim young creature, addicted to pink and blue muslins, but with neither family nor prospects, was the sun of his days, the moon and stars of his nights. He had been sensible and never regretted it--that is, hardly ever. To-night, however, the dancing flames that glorified the dull room reminded him of the grace of his boyhood’s love, and the dreary splash, splash, of the rain outside, of the gray monotony of the years that lay behind him and of those other dull and purposeless years that stretched out before him.

And when presently a pale Jane broke in upon this reverie, Jacob was forced to brush his hands across his eyes twice to make sure it was Jane and not the slim young creature to whom he had brought the early crocuses in the springtime of his youth. Neither knew exactly how it happened, but Jane found herself sobbing out her story on Uncle Jacob’s broad bosom, and feeling strangely comforted by the tender pressure of his pudgy hand upon her shoulder. When she cried out that she could not stand it to have that hateful book come out, and to listen to the comments upon it, it was Uncle Jacob who suggested that a trip abroad might accomplish wonders in the way of making her forget both the man and the book. Not that he believed it--he lied gallantly there--but he had his reward in seeing the face he loved brighten somewhat.

And when Jane stole away with a check in her hand, leaving him to explain to Aunt Susan her absence from dinner and her early departure in the morning, in spite of the ordeal that lay before him, there was a warm glow underneath the white vest, a glow which even the approaching grenadier-like tread of Aunt Susan could not dispel.