CHAPTER XII

THE SPECIAL DELIVERY

Miss Frazier approved, and was even delighted with the frocks when she came up to view them after breakfast next morning.

“Shall we try them on for you?” Kate offered eagerly.

“No, I don’t believe so. I can trust Madame Pearl, I am sure, to say nothing of you girls yourselves! And there is a lot to be done now to get ready for the party.”

Miss Frazier was moving and speaking in suppressed excitement, any one could see that. This party to her was to be a significant moment in her own life as well as in the girls’!

“What can we do?” Kate asked.

“You may help me to decorate the drawing-room and hall. If I engage a professional person he will simply load the whole place with flowers in a set and stuffy way. Besides, this is an informal party, and we want the decorations to be very simple and unstudied.” Then Miss Frazier added with a twinkle in her eye, “That’s why we must study very hard and fuss and consult.”

Both girls laughed at that.

“I’m expecting a man now to help Timothy move the furniture back for dancing. As soon as they are done we can begin. The dresses are charming, and I congratulate you.”

Since getting into the train the afternoon before the comrade in Elsie had not been visible. The girls had spoken to each other only in monosyllables and with eyes usually averted. Almost as though they had agreed upon it, however, they played up a little in the presence of their aunt. She had been so kind to them and counted so much on the day together to have made them friends, they had not the heart to let her see just how things stood between them. So at dinner they had told her of the day’s adventures vivaciously, dwelling most on their reactions to “The Blue Bird” and the episode of the post. For some reason Elsie did not mention the young man who had shadowed them in such an unshadowy way. That omission surprised Kate and gave her pause. What did such reticence mean? Aunt Katherine had been much diverted by Kate’s account of her interview with the box-office clerk and the manager. Her comment had been, “You are a Frazier, Kate! You have a _spine_. I imagine the manager sensed that.”

After dinner the three had settled to a quite exciting game of Mah Jong. No need for Elsie and Kate to pretend friendliness then, for the game took all their attention, and they could forget each other as persons. After that there was a brief stroll in the garden, Aunt Katherine walking between the girls, their arms drawn through hers. It had all seemed very peaceful and congenial. But there had been no “good-nights” upstairs, though in accordance with Aunt Katherine’s will the doors stood open between the two bedrooms.

So now, when Aunt Katherine left to attend to the moving of the furniture, Kate turned to Bertha and said, “I shall be in the garden over by the Dentons’ hedge, writing letters. Will you call me when Miss Frazier is ready, Bertha?”

Without a glance at Elsie she picked up her pad and hurried out. She hoped that Elsie realized she was avoiding using the sitting-room and the desk they were supposed to share; and she would not have minded knowing that Elsie’s conscience bothered her about it. But if it did, Elsie gave no sign. She herself simply turned away about some business of her own.

There was so much for Kate to tell her mother in this letter that was interesting and wonderful! First, of course, there was Madame Pearl and her most unique shop that didn’t look like a shop a bit. She must describe the frocks they had chosen, or rather that Madame Pearl had chosen for them; Kate realized now that they themselves had done no choosing at all. Then dining in the luxurious club—she would describe that in detail. She had never in her life had quite such a stimulating conversation with any one before as that conversation at luncheon. She recalled it now as an hour during which she had _thought_, and thought rapidly, and expressed her thoughts to an attentive listener who in her turn _thought_ and came back at her in a most provocative manner. Ideas had spun in the air between them like iridescent bubbles, changing colour as they turned and you viewed different sides of them. The truth about that was that two most congenial minds had discovered each other, and that is as exciting an adventure as there is in the world, and not at all an ordinary one. The thing that gave this experience its final tang was that the two minds, though comprehending each other perfectly, worked entirely differently. It followed that for each other they had great discoveries and surprises. Together they danced as one in figures new to both!—Of course, Kate could not tell her mother exactly this, but she could tell her enough so that she would understand a little what had happened. But she must begin.

Instead, unhygienically, she sucked the end of her pencil.

Would Mother approve of her having accepted the party frock? That bothered her a little. Knowing Aunt Katherine now she understood her mother much less than ever before on these points. The dress must have cost—no, she would not imagine what it must have cost since Aunt Katherine had told her not to give that end of it a thought. Still, she would describe the dress to Mother, and she could come to conclusions for herself.

“Dearest Mother”:—Oh, there was so much, so very much, it was quite hopeless to write! There was the fairy in the glass. That must be told first. There was not the slightest doubt in Kate’s mind that the two were exactly the same, the fairy in the woods that day and the reflection of Elsie in the mirror at Madame Pearl’s. But what its explanation could be was unthinkable. At the time the little Kate had seen the fairy in the woods, Elsie was only a little girl of her own age. How, then, had Kate seen her as she would look eight years later in a mirror in a Boston shop? It was such an unanswerable question that Kate’s mind turned away from it. Still, not for one minute did she doubt that the two visions had been exactly the same. What would Katherine make of it?

“Hello. Good morning.” Jack Denton, in white flannels, tall and athletic, was standing the other side of the hedge, swinging his tennis racket and smiling a friendly, frank smile. “Excuse me, but you’re Miss Kate Marshall, aren’t you? My sister and I are coming to the party in your honour to-night. I’m Jack Denton, and Rose will be out in a minute. If you’ll play a set with us I’ll call up another fellow and make doubles.”

Kate jumped up, delighted. She went to the wall. “Good morning,” she said. “I was just beginning a letter. But I’d love to play—that is, for a little while, till Aunt Katherine needs me. But why don’t we just shout for Elsie? She likes tennis, I know, and Aunt Katherine says she plays wonderfully.”

But Jack’s expression had changed queerly. He grew slightly red and avoided looking directly at Kate. “No need to get any one yet,” he objected. “Heaven knows when Rose will be out. She’s awfully pokey—slow. Let us begin just by ourselves till she does appear, anyway. Can you jump? Here’s a hand.”

But Kate shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t think I’ll play, after all. I may be called any minute to help Aunt Katherine, and besides—besides, it’s very warm, isn’t it?”

Kate was looking at the pad in her hand, about to turn away.

But Jack kept her a minute. “Oh, I say! You aren’t offended, are you? I wouldn’t do that for anything.”

“No, of course not.” But Kate’s negation was made only out of a spirit of reserve and also embarrassment. “No.”

“But you are, and I don’t wonder. Of course you’d be on your cousin’s side. And listen. We are, too. Rose and I and all of us are, always have been. We never could see any sense in all the hubbub. It’s just been Grandmother and Grandmother’s friends. We all thought Elsie was great stuff when she visited Miss Frazier before—— And we’re coming to the party to-night, you bet. Only—at this minute Grandmother is sitting right up there in a window where she can see the court, and it might change her, decide her for some reason not to go to-night. She feels that her going formally and giving in, as it were, publicly, is the thing that’s going to turn the trick. It’s her show, sort of. If we did it first, now, she might be just as bad as ever again, begin all over again. Do you see?”

“No, I don’t see,” Kate said in all truth. Jack’s explanations shed no light whatsoever. His face had grown steadily redder as he realized that he had simply made a mess of it. “I don’t see.”

But even as she stood looking at Jack Denton she was smiling at herself mentally, to hear how her voice had taken on the very timbre of Elsie’s when she was being her most unpleasantly polite. What a copy cat she was. Still, there was a certain satisfaction in finding herself so successful in a self-made rôle. “All you say is just Greek to me. And I ought to be writing my letter. Good morning.”

She turned deliberately and sauntered back to her place in the shade of the orchard. But Jack did not leave the wall. He stayed there watching her, a frown gathering on his brow. When she was seated, with her back against an apple tree trunk and her pad ready on her knee, he called again.

“Oh, I say,” he called. “I thought you knew everything about it all, of course. If you don’t, it’s a shame. I just can’t be apologetic enough.”

But Kate did not turn to him. “Go away, go away, go away,” she said, mentally. “I don’t want to hear any more. It’s not for you to unravel the mystery. I don’t want to know from a stranger. I feel very indignant. Very, very indignant, and I hardly know why.”

Kate’s silence meant as much to Jack Denton as the thoughts he could not hear. He turned away and strolled toward the house, swinging his racket and looking at the ground dejectedly. Kate was sorry she had been so deliberately rude, but she simply could not call him back. She was too really indignant, and at the same time unable to analyze her indignation. She returned to her letter.

But she found it very difficult to write. There was just too much ever to begin to put on paper, in spite of this being only her third day here! What she must do was simply tell the _facts_ and let the rest go. The colour of the facts, all that lay underneath and over them, must wait. The letter that finally developed was a thin affair, perfunctory and empty of interest. Kate had never in her life felt so far from her mother.

The girls and Miss Frazier selected and cut flowers in the garden. They took them in loosely on their arms and tossed them down on a damp sheet spread on the floor just inside the drawing-room doors. Then came the deciding on receptacles and the placing of them. It was all very interesting, and exciting, too, for as the rooms grew in adornment Kate felt the party itself drawing nearer and nearer. Miss Frazier seemed very gay as they worked. She laughed and said whimsical things in a whimsical manner. And her every touch was deft, and the result artistic.

That morning Kate learned more about colour values and proportion than she had ever learned in all her years of school. She had not dreamed that so much _mind_ could be used on such an apparently simple occupation as placing a few nasturtiums in a vase!

What a good time they were having! Kate moved about the big drawing-room and hall with almost dancing steps, she was so happy doing her aunt’s intelligent bidding and seeing loveliness form before her eyes and under her hand. And Elsie was laughing quite spontaneously at Aunt Katherine’s humour and taking as much delight as Kate in the growing beauty of the arrangements.

“Someone to speak to you on the telephone, Miss Frazier.” Isadora had come out from the telephone booth under the hall stairs.

“Who is it, please? Always get the name, Isadora.”

“Yes, ma’am. I always do when I can. But this gentleman won’t give his name. Says it’s not necessary. He wants to speak to you on important business, he says.”

“Won’t give his name! Nonsense! Tell him, then——” But suddenly in the middle of this command Aunt Katherine’s expression changed. “Oh, well, I think I know now who it must be. That’s all right, Isadora.”

Aunt Katherine dropped the yellow roses she was sorting—their wet stems and leaves instantly spreading white spots on to the polished surface of the little table. With a quick step she hurried toward the telephone booth. Kate snatched up the roses and remedied the harm they had done as well as she could with her pocket handkerchief. Then she and Elsie simply stood idly about waiting for the doors of the telephone booth to open and their Chieftain to reappear. For having seen Aunt Katherine work with the flowers they knew themselves incompetent to go ahead alone.

As Kate leaned against the banister, and Elsie smoothed her hair before a little gilt mirror on the wall near the door and secured the shell pins holding it, the front-door bell suddenly rang and Isadora came into the hall to answer it. A postman in livery standing there thrust a pad at her mumbling, “Sign here.”

Elsie dropped a shell pin on to the floor and rushed to Isadora. “It’s a special delivery,” she cried. “For me?”

Yes, it was for Elsie. She almost snatched it out of the postman’s hands and scrawled her signature on the pad that Isadora surrendered.

“All right,” she said, pushing the pad at the postman and the next instant shutting the door directly in his face. Had she shoved him out? Kate was not at all sure she hadn’t.

Then Elsie ran through the hall with the letter hugged up under her chin and up the stairs past Kate. “Tell Aunt Katherine I’ll be right back,” she called as she went. But she stopped on the first landing to lean over the banister and whisper down, “Don’t say anything about my having had a special delivery, will you, Kate?”

“Of course not, if you don’t want me to. It’s none of my business, is it?”