CHAPTER XVI

A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER

Jeanne had lost her spy. She had lost herself as well. Only after much flying and four landings was she able to find her way back to the spot where Madame Bihari patiently awaited her. When she arrived the sun was setting once more and it was again time for tea.

As on the previous night, Jeanne lay long beneath her canopy of red and gold. But no silver plane came to shine down upon her.

“Marvelous plane,” she murmured. “Wonder if I shall ever see it again, or learn the secret of its shining beauty?”

On the day following the dance, Florence took a forenoon off to climb to the crest of a hill that overlooked the city. She sat herself down upon a heap of fallen leaves, then proceeded to indulge in an occupation quite unusual for a girl. Selecting a fine smooth stick that had lain long enough upon the ground to become brittle and all sort of “whitty,” she began to whittle. A boy cousin had long ago introduced her to the joyous art of whittling. What did she make? Mostly nothing at all. She just whittled. And as she carved away at the brittle wood, she thought. Long, deep thoughts they were too. Ah yes, there was the charm of whittling—it made thinking easy.

“If it wasn’t all so tranquil and beautiful, I’d leave it,” she thought as her eyes took in the scene beneath her feet. Yes, it surely was beautiful. The red brick factory, built beside a rushing stream, quite old and all covered with vines, had a quiet charm all its own. Beside it, reflecting the golden glory of autumn trees, was the millpond. Beyond that the water flowing over the dam, sparkled like a thousand diamonds.

“Yes,” she murmured, “it is beautiful. I did not know that old New England could be so entrancing. And yet, it is not the city, the factory, the hills, the trees that hold you. It’s the people.”

This was true. There was the little family in the canary-cage house who had taken her in. The room she and Verna occupied was so small. There was hardly room to move about. Yet they were happy. Verna was obliging, kind and generous to a fault. More important than that, she was eager to know about everything. And she, Florence, knew so many, many things about which this child of a small city had scarcely dreamed. They talked at night, hours on end.

Strangely enough as she thought of this flower-like girl, a sudden mental image gave her a picture of Hugo, the idol of last night’s affair. She could see him now as plainly as she might if his picture had been thrown upon a screen before her. His dark eyes were flashing, his tangled hair tossing, his white teeth gleaming, as he exclaimed: “That’s fine! Now let’s have a little jazz!”

She shuddered. Somehow, she did not wish to think of Verna and Hugo at the same instant. And yet if asked why, she could not have found a sensible reply.

“Surely,” she said to the trees, the hills and the city before her, “he is handsome, gallant and popular. Who could ask for more?”

And the hills seemed to echo back, “Who? Who? Who?”

Ah yes, who? For all this, Florence was experiencing a feeling of unhappiness over the whole affair. “Why?” she asked herself. “Why?”

She did not have high social ambitions, of this she was certain. Happiness, she knew, could not be attained by sitting close to the head of the table at a banquet, nor of being intimate with great and rich people. Happiness came from within. And yet this had been her first little social venture. Always before she had worked in the gymnasium or on the playground. This time she had planned something different, planned it well. She had dreamed a new dream and the thing had not turned out as she had expected. The thing she had planned would, she had hoped, be beautiful. Had this affair ended beautifully? She was to be told in a few hours that it had been wonderful. Just now she was thinking, “There was plenty of noise.” Once Hugo had dumped out a whole bank of flowers to seize the tub that had held them, and beat it for a drum. Everyone had laughed and shouted. There had been no beautiful moonlight waltz at the end, only a wild burst of sound.

“Probably I’m soft and sentimental,” she told herself. “And yet—” she was thinking of Danby Force. “Our people,” he had said, “seemed a little dull, so I hired Hugo. Thought he might stir them up with his saxophone.”

He _had_ stirred them up—some of them. Some remained just as they had been. Her little family in the canary-cage house were that sort. They lived simply, quietly, snugly in that tiny house. They did not ask for a bigger house. They had no car. They did not crave excitement. Their lives were like small, deep, still running streams.

Once those streams had been disturbed, horribly disturbed. That was when the mill shut down four years before. It was Tom Maver, father of the family, who had told her about it. Tom was a small, quiet sort of man.

“I’ve worked in the mill since I was sixteen,” he said. “Always tending a bank of spinning wheels. Never did anything else. We were happy. Had our home, our garden, our little orchard all snug and cozy.

“Then,” he had sighed, “mills down south where labor is cheap, child labor and all that, cut in on our trade. The mill shut down. I had to find work. I went to a farm. They set me cutting corn, by hand. The corn was taller than I was, and heavier. I lasted three days. My face and hands were cut, and my back nearly broken. I was sick when I came home.” A look of pain overspread his honest face. “I tried ditch-digging and, in winter, putting up ice. That was terrible. I fell in and was nearly drowned. After that I—I just gave up.

“Well,” he sighed, “we didn’t starve, but we didn’t miss it much.

“But now,” he added brightly, “the mill is running and we are happy.”

“Yes,” Florence thought to herself, “they say they are happy, and I believe they are. And that’s what counts most—happiness.” Yes, that was it. They did not need jazz and a saxophone, a grinning Hugo and his roaring tub to make them happy. They had something better, a simple, kindly peace.

“Jazz,” she murmured. “It seems to get into people’s very lives.” She was thinking now of a friend, a beautiful girl not yet twenty. Her life was a round of jazz dances. Her doctor had ordered her to an island in Lake Superior for her health. She had been taking drugs for hay fever. This was affecting her heart. On this island there was no hay fever. She had escaped hay fever, but there was no jazz and her cigarettes ran out. “In another week I should have died—simply died,” she had said to Florence. And Florence knew she had spoken the truth. “How terrible to become a slave to habits that are not necessary to our lives!” she whispered. “And yet, I must not judge others. I only can try to select the best from both the old and the new for myself.”

As she sat there looking down upon the city, thinking of its joys and its sorrows, its successes and its perils, she was like some brooding Greek goddess dreaming of the future.

Suddenly she stood up straight and tall. Flinging her arms wide, she remained thus, motionless as a statue. She was beautiful, was this girl of strong heart and a strong body, beautiful as heroic Greek statuary is beautiful. Standing there, she saw the sun come out from behind a cloud to bathe the hillside with its glory of light. Racing down the hill, this narrow patch of light appeared at last to linger lovingly over the little city.

“It is a sign,” the girl whispered. “In the end troubles shall be banished!” For the moment her face was transfigured by some strange light from within. Then she turned to walk slowly down the hill.

As she entered the grounds that surrounded the mill, she was startled to see a strange figure half hidden by a wild cranberry bush at a spot near the gate. At first she believed him to be hiding there and thought swiftly, “This may be the spy!” Next instant she realized that he was raking dead leaves from beneath the bush.

A strange, rather horrible sort of person he appeared to be. His hair was kinky and cut short, his dark face all but covered with a short curly beard. His bare arms were long and hairy. As he rested there, bent over, clawing at the leaves, he resembled an ape. He grinned horribly at the girl as she passed, but did not speak.

“One more newcomer to the community,” was her mental comment. “But of course, since he works about the yard he does not enter the mill. He could scarcely be the spy. And yet—” she wondered how strong the locks and bolts of doors and windows were and whether it were possible, after all, for the spy to come from without, at night.

On enquiry she was to discover that at night the plant was guarded by a watchman, one of the oldest employees of the place, and entirely trustworthy.

For the moment, however, she was bent on entering the mill. She liked its din, loved to see the speeding shuttles and feel the movement of life about her. Besides, she had not forgotten what Danby Force had said: “Things often happen in the mill after a jazz night.” She thought of the girl who had fallen into a vat of blue dye. “Has anything happened today, I wonder?” she whispered to herself.