CHAPTER XIV

THE STRANGER IN THE GARDEN

Soon after eight Miss Frazier stood regally in the wide hall between her two nieces, receiving and introducing the first arrivals. They came fluttering in at the big wide-open door—girls in shimmering, fluffy party frocks of rainbow colours; boys, mostly in white flannels and dark coats, but a few in tuxedos; and a thin scattering of two older generations, these latter gray-haired grandmothers and younger matrons—some of the mothers looking scarcely older than their own children, in the modern manner. All was murmuring, laughter. Then the orchestra placed back in the blue breakfast-room began tuning their instruments. Jack Denton claimed Kate for the first dance. He danced perfectly, much better than Kate, in fact, who had had little experience; and all the time he kept up a stream of interesting nonsense. Kate laughed at him and swung along more and more in harmony with the music. How gay, how merry it all was! Elsie floated past, her green chiffon draperies like airy wings.

“Isn’t she lovely!” Kate exclaimed in admiration that must find voice. “Do you know I think she is the very prettiest——” She was going to say, “the very prettiest girl I have ever seen,” but Jack interrupted, his brown eyes smiling down at her: “No, I wouldn’t say she’s the _prettiest_——”

No one in all her life had ever even insinuated that Kate was pretty before, and the comparison that Jack indicated now was beyond contemplating. It was the magic silver cap, of course. Suppose it should blow off as they danced! How surprised Jack Denton would be!

As the evening went on Kate entertained more and more the conceit that she was masquerading in prettiness. There was no blinking the fact that she was tremendously popular. And it obviously was not just the easy popularity of the girl for whom the party is given. Not a bit of it. It was spontaneous, joyous. Perhaps she realized the reality of this popularity all the more because she had never experienced it before. At the two or three high-school dances in Middletown which her mother had allowed her to attend, while not being exactly a wallflower, she had not particularly shone. There had been many minutes of suspense when she forced a semblance of a smile to her lips and intense interest to her eyes while she watched the more popular girls swinging by with their partners, while all her mind was taken up with praying that Jim Walker or Cecil Quinn would look in from the hall and notice there was a girl there not dancing. It is true that Jim or Cecil or some other usually did notice sometime before the dance was half over and come to her rescue, for Kate was a good sort and everybody liked her. At those dances Kate never counted on the Hart boys for attention, although they were her escorts to and from; for to them Kate was no better than a sister. They would have been glad to see her popular, and taken natural pride to themselves in it. But it never entered their heads to be gallant themselves. No, the high-school dances had left Kate secure in the conviction that she would never be a success socially and in the philosophical determination not to care.

But to-night all that was changed. Even Elsie, perfectly beautiful as she was, was not having the same success. She danced constantly, of course, but often with a boy whom Kate had had to refuse.

In an intermission a dowager-like old lady beckoned to Kate from a chair near an open door leading out on to the terrace. Kate left Jack Denton who at the minute was fanning her with a magazine which he had picked up from a table for the purpose, and went to the dowager.

“Bring a chair,” the bejewelled one commanded, “and talk to an old woman for a minute.”

And when Kate had drawn up a stool that stood near and sat down close to her she said, “You are every bit as pretty as your mother was, Katherine Marshall. Every bit!”

Kate shook her head, laughing. “It’s just a disguise,” she affirmed, mysteriously.

“A disguise? What do you mean, you funny child?”

“This cap I am wearing is a magic cap,” Kate informed her, touching its star points ever so lightly with her finger tips. “But shh! don’t let them hear. I will confess to you, though, that it makes me much, much better looking than I really am, and more popular.”

The evening had rather gone to Kate’s head. But the dowager person liked it. She liked it very much. She tapped Kate’s shoulder with her jewelled lorgnette. “Well, then, shall I say,” she continued quite in Kate’s fantastic mood, “you have your mother’s prettiness to begin with, and on top of that the magic cap has added a good bit more. But even better than prettiness you have her spirit. She was always the belle of every party. And often I’ve sat right here in this very chair and watched her gliding past with the young men. Dancers did glide then, not hop and walk. In spite of her preoccupation she always gave me a smile as she drifted. And I was old and ugly even then.”

“Old and ugly! Are you wearing a magic something yourself to-night, then? Perhaps it’s your pearls that make you seem stately and lovely!”

There was blarney in this, for while the dowager was stately enough she certainly was not lovely in any usual sense of the word.

But Kate was scarcely responsible. She hardly knew what she was saying; she was simply effervescing with high spirits and a heady self-satisfaction.

The dowager laughed mellowly. She was not often mellow, and certainly she had not been mellow before this evening. She had sat perfectly still in her chair, her hands folded, with the expression of a judge in court. Now, however, she was a judge no longer. She had slipped into the spirit of the party, swept in on Kate’s fantasy. Miss Frazier watching, but not appearing to watch, from a distant divan where she conversed with two or three mothers, saw the mellowing even at that distance and was well pleased. “Congratulations, Kate,” she said, mentally. “Congratulations, and thank you.”

Meanwhile the dowager was murmuring in Kate’s ear: “You are a dear! It’s for your mother’s and your grandfather’s sake I came to-night and persuaded my daughter to let the young people come. And now I am glad I did.”

Kate looked up at her. “Why for their sake? Why not come, anyway?” But as she spoke automatically, Kate felt her lips stiffening over the words. Indignation was suddenly welling up as it had in the garden with Jack Denton that morning. Glamour fled away, and Kate was straightening like a warrior.

But the dowager hardly heard her question, and certainly did not notice the straightening process. She went on, “I always said no good would come of it. There’s something in good blood that tells—and in bad blood, too. Not that we knew the blood was bad—although in time it showed it was surely enough—just that we didn’t know anything about it! How Miss Frazier dared, a person of her race and blood——”

But Kate interrupted with a strained laugh. “Blood!” she wanted to exclaim. “You make me creep. Are you Lady Macbeth’s grandmother?” But she uttered no sound except the laugh. This was fortunate for Kate, and remarkable restraint. She sat with lips stiffened, watching the glamour gliding away out of her heart, out of the party.

The dowager had paused a minute at Kate’s laugh, waiting for her to speak. But now she continued, “Terrible risk. Everyone warned her. But she would listen to nobody, not even to me. Now she’s trying to unmake her bed. It’s to be hoped she sees the folly of expecting anything good to be made out of bad blood. Environment! Pshaw! Futile!”

Kate shivered. She looked around for a way of escape from this murmuring, croaking person whom but a minute ago she had dubbed stately and lovely. If she should start now and dance off on the music that was beginning again might she outdance the spectre? Might she overtake the glamour? There was Elsie, standing alone for the minute in the open doorway a few steps away. Kate knew now why she had outdistanced Elsie in popularity to-night; she knew it as she watched her, hardly aware of thinking about it at all. Elsie was too fine, too entirely lovely in the real meaning of the word to appeal to any but those sensitive to loveliness in its purest essence. She did not belong to the party at all. She belonged to the starlight beyond the lamplight, to the dim orchard—to the orchard house!

“Whom will you dance this with?” the dowager was inquiring in Kate’s ear.

“The first person that gets here,” Kate replied, quickly. But the dowager did not take offence. Several were in the race, but a tall, lanky youth won, a humorous creature with a happy-go-lucky bearing. When Kate rose to dance off with him, the dowager took her hand. She smiled up at her in the most friendly manner. “You must come to call on me soon,” she said. “Or I will call for you and take you for a drive and then home for tea. That will be better, I think. How is that?”

“Thank you.” Kate managed to smile, but it was a smile her mother would never have recognized.

“I’ll say,” her partner informed her the minute they were out of hearing, “you’ve made a hit. Do you know who she is? Jack Denton’s grandmother, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith. The social autocrat of Oakdale. Everything will come your way now.”

But Kate did not respond to this gay assurance. “What’s the matter?” her partner asked, surprised. Responsiveness had been Kate’s greatest charm all the evening, if she had only known it, not the cap.

“Nothing. Only I’m chilly.”

The boy whistled. “No wonder, having sat next to that old iceberg so long. Though ’twas probably the air from the door, too. It’s lots cooler and a storm is coming up, I think. I’d have rescued you sooner if I’d had the nerve. She looked almost outlandishly amiable, though. What was her line?”

Kate shivered, a pretend shiver this time, getting her gaiety back. “Blood! Just blood, if you will believe me. Is she an ogress as well as a social autocrat? She discussed blood in several of its phases. Bad blood, good blood, and talking blood. Like the singing bone, I suppose.”

The boy laughed heartily. “She didn’t waste any time in mounting her hobby, I’ll say. But she can’t worry you. Your blood’s all right. That’s the word’s been going ’round ever since the invitations were out. ‘Fraziers, one of the best families in Massachusetts.’ She was probably congratulating you and expecting a return of the compliment.”

Kate laughed. But in spite of her new gaiety, the corners of her mouth had quite lost their winged tilt.

After a few more dances, supper was announced. Kate had promised Jack Denton early in the evening that she would take supper with him. She saw him now looking about for her. In an instant their eyes would meet and he would hurry across to her where she stood for the minute alone. But she suddenly realized that she was tired. She ached with too much dancing. She would never have acknowledged this to herself, of course, unless something had gone wrong with the evening. Hardly knowing why, she stepped out of the door near which she was for the instant standing, backward. That step precipitated her into a different world entirely. The stars had disappeared behind dark, windy rain clouds. The air was fresh, and you heard a wind and felt its edges. Kate took a deep breath. She would stay here in the blowy dark just for a little. It wouldn’t hurt Jack to search a minute longer.

She moved, still backward, farther away from the lighted doorway. She brushed against a garden chair and sat down. She leaned her head against its high back. An impulse came to take off the magic silver cap and be herself. Whimsically she lifted it from her head and placed it on her knee.

“Now you’re just Kate Marshall,” she spoke to herself, but aloud. “Just ordinary, plain-as-day Kate Marshall. Dowagers can’t spoil anything for you. They wouldn’t pay enough attention to you now to bother about spoiling. All the magic that’s really your own, all that isn’t false magic, she can’t touch. Nothing she could say could touch it.”

Kate sighed, having finished her little heartfelt speech to herself. She felt relieved and freshened. She had certainly cast off the dowager’s spell.

“That’s right. All the magic that’s your own, nobody, even a Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, can touch. It’s safer than the stars from troubling!”

That was a low voice speaking directly behind her. No, it was not simply her own thoughts, although those words might very well have been in her mind that minute, for some of them were right out of “The King of the Fairies.” But it had been a voice, a man’s voice.

Slowly she turned her head. Directly behind her chair a man was standing. She could not see his features at all, because the night was so black, but she thought that he was hatless, and she knew he was in dark clothes. The wind, not merely its edges, had come to earth now. Was it flapping the borders of a long dark cape enveloping the vague figure?

The vague figure bent down to her. Yes, it was a dark cape, blowing away from his shoulders on the wind. It seemed as though the being himself leaned down out of the wind. “Give this to Elsie, please,” he said, in quite a matter-of-fact tone now. Then the wind took him. At least Kate could not see him any more. He had stepped back among the tall lilac bushes that bordered the terrace at that spot.

When he was gone it was just exactly as though he had never been, except for the folded paper that Kate found clutched in her hand. That folded paper, however, definitely fixed him as a reality. But who could it have been? Mr. O’Brien, the detective, crossed Kate’s mind, or one of his assistants, that young man of the polka-dotted tie. But instantly she laughed, though silently, at such a notion. They, neither of them, she felt sure, would by any chance have quoted from “The King of the Fairies” while doing business. “It’s safer than the stars from troubling.” Had the King of the Fairies himself passed her there on the wind? No, hardly. He wouldn’t be leaving a note for Elsie.

Anyway, whoever it might be, he had spoken in a voice whose bidding she was ready to follow. She rose and took the few steps between the chair and the drawing-room door. But she stepped over the sill without hurry, with a meditative air. The man, standing a little way in among the tall lilac bushes, said to himself; “She’s the right stuff. Not startled or upset. Good for Kate Marshall!”

Jack Denton pounced upon her almost at once. “Where _have_ you been?” he cried. “The salad I fought for and won for you has just been commandeered by my grandmother. Now will you agree to stay put while I dash into the fray in the dining-room again?”

“Yes, after a minute. First I must find Elsie. I have to see her very specially.”

“Elsie? Haven’t laid eyes on her for some time. Give me your message and I’ll go hunt.”

“No, but do look around for her. I will, too, and that will save time.”

Elsie was not to be found anywhere in all the rooms that were lighted and open that evening on the first floor of the house. “She’s just not down here at all, unless she’s somewhere in the servants’ wing,” Jack finally reported when they met by chance at the foot of the stairs.

Kate now went to her aunt who was having salad sitting between two dowagers, one of them Kate’s dowager. “I am looking for Elsie, Aunt Katherine,” she said. “Have you seen her recently?”

Miss Frazier shook her head. “Not for some time. I myself have been wondering what has become of her.” Miss Frazier’s dark eyes as she lifted them to Kate were clouded with worried surmise.

Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith laughed. As a laugh, it sounded a trifle unsure of itself and uneasy for a dowager person. “I had a few words with the child myself half an hour or so ago,” she volunteered. “Strangely enough, she took some offence at some remarks that were meant only kindly, and flounced off. Perhaps she is sulking somewhere about it.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, if my niece was rude to you.” But in spite of the words Miss Frazier’s tone was not at all a sorry tone; it was rather edged. She herself had just been submitted to some remarks of Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith’s that were doubtless meant kindly, and as a consequence her sympathy was all with Elsie. But even so, if Elsie were sulking, she was undoing all that Miss Frazier’s efforts had built up in her behalf. That was a pity.

“Don’t apologize for the young person you call your niece,” Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith said, suavely. “We will lay it simply at the door of the times. There is no respect for age, say nothing of _birth_, in this generation.”

Miss Frazier paid slight attention to these acid remarks. She merely said to Kate in a concerned tone, “I’d go upstairs to look for her, Kate. Under no circumstances must the party be ruined for her by _anybody_. Do persuade her to come back and forget any hurts she may have received. Do your best.”

Kate flew away on the errand, her heart rejoiced that her aunt had answered the dowager exactly as she had.

There was no light in the girls’ suite. “She can’t be here,” Kate decided. But just to make absolutely certain she went through and, fumbling for it, turned on the switch just inside Elsie’s door.

The first thing that caught her eye under the shaded lights that blossomed forth so obediently at the pressure of her finger was the fairy green frock dropped in a heap exactly in the middle of the floor, the white sandals topping it! Elsie herself was undressed and in bed!

“Go away, go away,” she commanded, plaintively, not even looking to see who was in the room.

Kate stood dumbfounded. Then she remembered her aunt’s clouded, kind eyes, and the dowager’s haughty, skeptical nose. She braced herself. “I can’t go away,” she said softly, evenly. “Not until you get up and get dressed and come downstairs with me. How can you treat Aunt Katherine so?”

“I won’t get dressed. I won’t go down again. I hate the party! It’s your party, anyway. I’m not needed down there.”

Was Aunt Katherine right in the theory she had put forward at the Green Shutter Tea Room? Was Elsie simply jealous? But Kate rejected that thought almost before it had presented itself. In fact, she caught only the tail of it as it switched by! She spoke reasonably.

“Yes, it’s my party so-called. But you know perfectly well that Aunt Katherine means it even more for you. It’s so that you’ll get to be friendly with all the girls and boys who you say hardly speak to you. My being here was just an opportunity. Now if you vanish in the very middle of things, how do you think that will help any of us? It will be just unspeakable.”

“I want to be unspeakable. Go away.”

“Yes, perhaps you do. You are, anyway. But do you want Aunt Katherine to be ashamed? Could you ever forgive yourself for treating her so? She knows Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith has been rude to you, and she herself just now has come very near being rude to Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith on your account. Whatever all the fuss is about—honestly and truly I haven’t an idea what it is about myself—Aunt Katherine is all for you, Elsie. She’s your champion. You can’t go back on her now, right before everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re having a good time, not a bit. If you’re any good at all you’ll get dressed in a jiffy and go back down with me. You can _pretend_ you’re having a good time.”

Kate finished. Her argument had exhausted her strangely. She found herself trembling with the intenseness of her conviction that Aunt Katherine must be saved from all embarrassment.

For a few minutes Elsie made no visible response to the harangue but lay perfectly still, her eyes shut, her head turned away. Kate stood in the middle of the room, the fairy green dress at her feet, waiting. “I’ve done all I can,” she told herself. “Now we’ll just see whether she has any sense at all.”

After a space of utter stillness Elsie stirred, threw back the coverlet, and sat up. “You’re right, I suppose,” she said, sulkily. “I’m just a pig, that’s all. I was only thinking of myself.”

She did not look at Kate but busied herself picking up her scattered clothes. When Kate started to leave the room, however, she called her back. “Do you mind helping me with these?” she asked almost humbly. “I don’t want to ring for Bertha. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Let’s hurry. Everybody’ll be wondering.”

But now when Kate’s hands were needed she was recalled to the note still clutched in her fingers.

“Oh, I entirely forgot,” she exclaimed, dismayed. “Here is a note for you.”

Elsie unfolded the paper. If she had looked miserable before, when she had finished reading the few words on that paper she looked tragic. “Who gave it to you? How did you get it?”

Kate was amazed at the way petulance had turned to sorrow.

“I don’t know who, or even exactly how,” she confessed. “I was alone for a second on the terrace. A man appeared just out of the wind in a blowing, long cape. He had a singing voice at first so I hardly knew whether he was real. And he quoted ‘The King of the Fairies.’”

Elsie nodded. Nothing in Kate’s account surprised her apparently. The girls did not speak to each other again but silently worked together repairing the damage done to Elsie’s hair-dressing, getting her into the fairy green dress, and finally bathing away evidences of tears. Supper was just about over downstairs before they were ready to descend, and dance strains sounding. Jack had not given Kate up, however, but was faithfully waiting for her on the stairs.

He saw the girls the minute they appeared at the upper turning, and bounded up several steps to meet them. “Where have you been hiding?” he asked, laughingly, and without any signs of surprise whatever. “I’ve managed to save some salad for you both and ices, too, here in the window seat.”

It was a window seat on the stairs, halfway down the first flight. “Oh, thanks,” Kate said, heartily. “Have you had some yourself, though?”

“Hardly likely, not until you came. Didn’t you promise to have supper with me?” Jack looked feigned surprise and grief.

He was certainly making their return to society easier. Girls and boys glanced up at them rather curiously as they danced past the drawing-room door, and a few of the mothers, sitting where they had a view of the stairs and the landing, rather stared. But since the truants could laugh and talk with Jack, who was acting as though their absence had been in no way extraordinary, they had no time to be self-conscious.

But suddenly Jack’s face went queer right in the middle of some nonsense. It was half a laugh, half dismay that twisted his countenance. Quick as thought, he pointed up to the second turn of the stairs. “That’s a fine old clock!” he exclaimed. “Take me up and show it to me.”

Why they obeyed his command so docilely—put their plates down again on the window seat and went back up the stairs—they hardly knew. But they did go, like lambs. And when they had turned a corner and were out of sight of dancers and chaperons Jack stopped, not looking at the clock at all, and dropped his eyes to Elsie’s feet. Even Elsie laughed when she saw what he was calling attention to. In their hurry the girls had forgotten one item, and here was Elsie ready to appear in the drawing-room in her pink satin, swansdown-edged boudoir slippers. They were very dainty slippers, quite fetching in fact, but they were hardly in harmony with the fairy green frock.

“Run back and change while Kate and I admire the clock,” Jack advised. And Elsie ran.

When she returned the three sat on the window seat and ate their long-delayed supper. At first Elsie said she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t possibly eat, but Jack laughed her out of that. Soon Rose came up to join them, carrying her ice, and stopping to take dainty tastes as she came.

“This is the nicest situation of all,” she exclaimed, settling down beside Elsie. “And what a view it offers. Why, it’s like being in a box at the theatre. We saw you and Kate, by the way, at ‘The Blue Bird.’ We thought it very grand of you to have a whole box to yourselves.”

Others followed Rose, some of them with plates of ice cream. And Kate noticed that the ices and the ice cream were in every case in a stage of melting. She suspected then that Jack had overheard the conversation about the missing Elsie and had collected this little band, encouraging them to _eat slowly_. The realization of his tact and consideration wiped out for ever any lurking indignation toward him left over from the morning, when he had squirmed at the idea of her calling Elsie down to play tennis.

A few minutes later, when Miss Frazier came out into the hall with old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith who was leaving and seemed to require her escort, she saw to her great surprise and relief that the very merriest part of the party was on the stairs. There were eight or nine girls and boys crowded about Kate and Elsie talking eagerly and interrupting themselves with the lightest-hearted laughter. No need to worry any more now because her girls were not on the floor dancing. This was an even better way of getting acquainted. Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, feeling for an instant that she had lost the full attention of her hostess, followed her gaze upward. Kate was looking down, and their eyes met. Then old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith did an amazing thing. At least, the few people who observed it were amazed. She made the motion of “good-night” with her lips to Kate, and _blew her a kiss_.

Both her grandchildren stared round-eyed. “I say,” Jack whispered, “you have certainly charmed my grandmother. What did you ever do to her?”

He looked at Kate, wonderingly respectful, with frankest curiosity.

When Miss Frazier returned from seeing the old lady out of the door, she stood for a minute within hearing of the conversation on the stairs. They were discussing “The Blue Bird” now, but presently it changed to “The King of the Fairies,” a book they all had read, apparently. She smiled inwardly, well pleased. “Katherine over again,” she told herself. But she had to admit, too, that Elsie was doing her share in keeping the subject at a high-water-mark of intelligent conversation. “Kate is certainly having an influence,” she reflected, “an even finer influence than I could have hoped for.” Then she passed on into the drawing-room, trailing her black scarf more regally than ever since she was so honestly proud of both her nieces.

When the last guest had departed Miss Frazier took an arm of each niece and led them toward the stairs. “It was all a great success,” she affirmed. “And it was you girls, yourselves, who made it a success. Kate, you were what a new girl—at least, any new girl worth her salt—ought to be, the belle of the ball. And, Elsie, you did me more than credit. I am, oh, so very proud of both my girls. Old maiden aunt that I am, I felt that I had two lovely daughters. Now I advise you to dash to bed and save all discussion of the party until morning. Breakfast is ordered for half-past nine to-morrow, so that you may sleep.”

“But sha’n’t we help you close up?” Elsie offered. “I heard you tell Isadora to go to bed.”

“No, thank you, my dear. I am going to stay down here awhile, finishing ‘The King of the Fairies.’ I was almost at the last chapter when Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith led the procession of arrivals. It is an enchanting story, just as you said. Now, good-night.”

For all its finality the “good-night” was spoken with greatest affection. In the last few hours Aunt Katherine had flowered into a serenely warm human being. Both Kate and Elsie realized the change in her, and each, for a different reason, was disturbed by it; Kate because now less than ever she understood how her mother ever could have let such a lovely person go out of her life; and Elsie—well, that concerns the secret of the orchard house.