CHAPTER XV

KATE ON GUARD

Kate was waked by the flapping of her window draperies. The rain that had held off during the evening was upon them now, a wild, windy, heavy rain, unusual for July. Kate heard it spattering on the floor of the balcony and pattering on the floor inside the tall windows. This last would never do. Much as she liked the fresh wet wind, full of garden and damp earth smells, she must close those windows or the room would be damaged. It was pitchy dark, and Kate could be guided only by sound and the direction from which the wind blew. Somehow she got the big door windows closed and fastened, simply by the sense of touch, and then turned gratefully bedward. But she did not go back to bed that night.

Elsie’s door had blown shut to only a crack, and light was coming through that crack. That was perhaps none of Kate’s business, but instantly she was concerned. She and Elsie had not said “good-night” to each other, but parted in silence. And Kate had gone to sleep wondering just how much Elsie was truly hurt by whatever it was that old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith had said to her, and wanting, but lacking the courage, to go in and sit on the edge of her bed to talk it out and comfort her if she could. If she had heard Elsie so much as turn in bed she would have taken heart; but not a sound had come from the other room after the light was out. In the end Kate had gone to sleep still undecided as to what she ought to do.

Now the light drew her. Perhaps Elsie had not been to sleep at all. Perhaps she was too unhappy to sleep. Kate had no idea what time it was, and she did not think of the time. Her only anxiety was that Elsie might not be angry with her for trying to comfort. On bare feet she crossed the bathroom floor and pushed at the door.

The lamp by Elsie’s bed was burning, but she had placed her party frock over it to dull its glow, so the room was in a queer green light. That was what Kate noticed first. The bed was empty. But Kate found Elsie at once, her back turned to her, and still unconscious of her presence, at the farther end of the room bending over a suitcase which she was busy packing. Elsie was fully dressed, even to her hat. She was wearing the green silk of their Boston jaunt, and the same brown straw hat. It was perfectly plain that she was running away, running away in the middle of a black, stormy night.

Kate pushed the door all the way open. “What are you doing?” she whispered, loudly.

Elsie turned upon her. She had been crying as she packed, and even in the excitement of the moment Kate reflected how oddly tears and a set, tragic face went with the jaunty costume with its brave flutter of orange at the neck.

“You belong in bed,” Elsie whispered back. “And any one can see what I’m doing.”

“Yes. Running away!”

“Yes, running away. And no business of yours.”

The warrior in Kate straightened. This was a clear call to arms. She felt very old and wise. She certainly would never let that crying little girl go away like this into the rain and dark night. She couldn’t expect to walk out right under Kate’s nose!

“Is that what the note I brought you was about?” she asked. “Was it a plan for this?”

“No. It was telling me _not_ to do this. But I’m going to, just the same. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t know.”

Elsie returned to her packing. Kate moved nearer to her.

“Do you think I’m going to stand here and _let_ you run away right in the middle of the night like this?” she asked, curiously.

Elsie did not glance up at her. She simply said, “Well, what can you do to stop me?”

“Wake the house, of course. Call Aunt Katherine. Shout for her.”

Elsie stared at Kate in unfeigned surprise. “You’d tell on me?” she asked in an unbelieving tone. “I thought you weren’t like that. I thought you were decent.”

“I am decent. I don’t tell, not about little things, like the key. But this is entirely different. I should certainly wake the whole house if you tried to walk out with that suitcase.”

“You wouldn’t.” Elsie lifted the suitcase which was filled and closed now, and picking up her hand-bag from where it lay on the dressing table, took a step toward the door. But Kate reached it ahead of her.

“I’ll shout,” Kate warned.

“Kate Marshall, please, please, please don’t!”

“I certainly will.”

Elsie began to cry silently and stood with her suitcase in one hand, her bag in the other, and her face turned from Kate, ashamed of her tears. Kate’s heart softened, but not her determination.

“Get undressed and into bed, and promise you won’t get out again to-night, or I shall go right to Aunt Katherine’s room now and tell her,” Kate said firmly.

After a moment of hesitation Elsie began to pull off her clothes furiously. In about two minutes she was in bed, her face turned toward the wall. In silence Kate picked up the cast-off garments Elsie had scattered, and put them away. The green suit she hung up on a hanger in the closet and the hat she put away in the deep hat-drawer. Then the suitcase claimed her attention. Bertha had better not find it packed and standing by the door in the morning. Kate unlatched it and took out the things. “The King of the Fairies” lay at the bottom of them all, with a little New Testament. Kate put the two books on Elsie’s bedside table under the lamp. Still Elsie did not move or speak; she might have been asleep for any sign she made that she knew what was occupying Kate in the room.

But Kate spoke to her: “You’ve burned a hole in your party dress,” she said.

It was true. The heat from the electric bulb had been strong enough to scorch the flimsy material.

“No matter,” Elsie muttered from her pillow. “I’ll never wear it again, anyway.”

She had not taken the trouble even to look at the damage. That told Kate, if it still needed telling, how truly desperate Elsie was.

“I’m going into my room,” Kate announced, after she had hung the ruined party dress away. “But don’t think I’m going to bed, for I’m not. I shall be sitting up, wide awake, and surely hear you if you get up again.”

Elsie did not answer.

Kate did not mind that. If never before, now she certainly merited Elsie’s wrath. Elsie had hated her before without any cause. There was a certain comfort to Kate in knowing the cause of her present state of mind, a certain satisfaction in no longer being scorned for nothing, but for something. She could defend herself to herself now.

But could she defend herself adequately? Had she really any business to have so interfered with Elsie’s plans? Had she any reason so at a leap to have become a dyed-in-the-wool tattletale, at least to have threatened tattletaling? Yes, she thought she could excuse herself. She thought she was more than justified. Even so it was a hateful business.

Kate wrapped herself in her dressing gown and sat in a wicker chair by her reading light. She did not dare lie in bed to think for fear she would drop off to sleep. She gave herself up to pondering the situation, but kept an ear cocked all the while for the slightest movement in the other room.

What should she do about things in the morning? Even if Elsie had failed to get off to-night, if Aunt Katherine were left unwarned, she would certainly plan so as not to fail the next time. Why, to-morrow morning itself Elsie might walk out of the house and never come back. If Elsie had any place to go to, Kate would not be so worried. But she knew that Elsie’s mother’s family, what there was of it, was living in Europe, and that not one member of it had ever shown the least consciousness of Elsie’s existence. Aunt Katherine had told her about that and marvelled at it. So Elsie had just no one to take her in if she did run away. There was the stranger in the garden! But he had told her not to run away. Kate was sure Elsie had spoken truth about that note. Who _was_ the stranger in the garden? His note had turned Elsie tragic, whoever he was.

There was no way out of it that Kate could see but telling. Elsie must be protected against herself.

But half an hour’s more pondering brought Kate to the conclusion that she would not tell _Aunt Katherine_. Her whole instinct was against that. Aunt Katherine, charming as she was, and kind, was after all only an aunt, and an aunt who had said herself that she simply could not like Elsie. What Elsie needed was a _mother_. This was work for Katherine. Kate had perfect confidence that if her mother could talk with Elsie everything would come clear for everybody. Light suddenly dawned in Kate’s puzzled mind. Katherine might take Elsie home with her. They would all three go back to Ashland together, and there all would be made right for Elsie. Once with Katherine’s arms around her shoulders, and Katherine’s gentle, understanding eyes looking into hers, Elsie would confide. Kate never doubted for an instant that her mother would be overjoyed to take the beautiful, unhappy Elsie to her heart. Why, since Aunt Katherine had failed so to make her happy, and since she did not even like this foster-niece, it might become a permanent arrangement; Elsie would live with them. She would be a sister!

All this was rather wild dreaming. Kate straightened mentally and pulled herself back to hard facts. The facts were simply that Kate could not bring herself to the idea of delivering Elsie up to Aunt Katherine for judgment or help, either one. Elsie needed a mother more than she needed anything else in the world. Katherine was a mother. Katherine must come.

And only a few hours ago Kate had felt very far away from her mother, very independent of her! She smiled now, remembering. Well, she had never needed her more. Sitting alone here in the sleeping house, with rain and wind at the windows and Elsie lying hating her in the next room, Kate _ached_ for her mother.

She decided to write her a special delivery letter. That would bring her day after to-morrow, or day after to-day rather, for it must be getting toward day now. For one day Kate could stand guard over Elsie. She was glad of her decision to write as soon as she arrived at it. It seemed automatically to relieve her from grave responsibility. Besides, the composition of the letter would keep her awake.

And so, mother darling, please come on the very first train. Your desperate Kate.

It had been a long, full letter. She had told Katherine just everything that had to do with Elsie and her strange behaviour from their very first meeting. When Kate looked up from her signature she found the night had passed; dawn was in the room, at least the gray light of a rainy morning.

Kate rose, stretched her cramped limbs, and yawned prodigiously. Then she crept to Elsie’s door. Elsie was not asleep. Their eyes met. There were dark circles under Elsie’s eyes, and her face in the gray light was almost paper-white. The girls stared at each other silently. Then Elsie turned her head away on the pillow.

“How she hates me!” Kate thought, as she stole back through the bathroom. “She’s a dreadful hater. I couldn’t hate any one that way, no matter what they had done.”

She turned out the light that was still burning by her bed. Then she took a cold shower bath and dressed in a fresh dress, the second chintz curtain one. She brushed her hair vigorously.

“Some difference,” she reflected, “between the party Kate and the morning-after one. Too bad I haven’t a magic cap for day-times!”

Perhaps she needed one especially to-day. For tired, sleepless people are rarely pretty people; and Kate’s eyes were almost as dark-rimmed as Elsie’s.

Her toilet completed, she stole again to Elsie’s door. Again their eyes met.

“If I were you I’d go to sleep,” Kate whispered. Elsie’s pallor bothered her. But Elsie did not deign to answer.

Kate, back in her room, with over four hours before breakfast stretching away ahead of her, curled up on the foot of the bed with “The King of the Fairies” in her hands. She opened it just anywhere, much as one opens conversation with a friend just anywhere. It is the _presence_ you want. And the presence of the soul in this book did not fail her now. How it drove walls backward and pushed roofs skyward! And as for out-of-doors, it made that boundless, lifting veils and veils of air disclosing Fairyland or Paradise, in any case the realler than real.

Kate was withdrawing from the chintz-curtained Kate on the bed. She was rising up out of that drowsy figure. She was floating. But the flowers from the chintz were still decking her, only they were living flowers now, smelling all the sweeter for the rain soaking their petals. And the birds from the chintz were with her, too, changed to living birds, soaring, floating, drifting with her, singing shrilly in the rain. The mysterious, many-coloured portals of sleep were opening to her far off beyond the last lifted veil of air.

It was nine-fifteen before she woke.