CHAPTER XIX

ELSIE CONFIDES

The girls stayed there, sitting on the window seat, for over an hour, watching for Katherine to come from the orchard. It was showering again, sheets of rain silvering the gardens and drawing curtains of silver magic about the orchard, swirling them all about the orchard’s borders. There was plenty of time for the story which Elsie told haphazardly and in broken sentences, led on by Kate’s interest, and her assurances that now she had seen Nick she would never try to interfere with any of their plans again. Kate’s story of the dragony, flowery picture frame had knocked all Elsie’s guards flat, too. Her story, straightened out, was this:

Elsie’s earliest memory was of her father. She had fallen down the house steps and bumped her head. Nick, her father, had appeared as by magic to kiss the hurt away and run back into the house with her in his arms. She remembered him bending over her, washing the bruise with cold water; then came the smell of witch-hazel. And though this was her first conscious memory, still the very memory itself held in it the inevitableness of this comfort from her father; so she was used to his ministrations.

The next memory was convalescence after measles when she was four. She was sitting up in a chair in a window over the street, wrapped in an eiderdown. Her father was reading to her from “The Psalms of David.” The words sang a beautiful song to her, especially when he came to “The Lord is my Shepherd.” And it was very comforting to have her father sitting there so quietly, near her, as though he meant to stay a long time.

“But your mother?” Kate asked her. “Didn’t she read to you after measles, too? Don’t you remember her?”

Yes, Elsie remembered her mother, though she thought it was a later memory, and it was never a memory of _mothering_. Gloria had hummed in and out of the house like a humming-bird. Later, when Elsie saw a humming-bird for the first time, she felt as she watched it exactly as she had always felt watching her mother; and the pains that she took not to startle the little spirit away were exactly the pains she had always taken not to startle her mother away, when by chance she hummed near. Gloria looked like a humming-bird, as well as acted like one. Humming-birds fascinated Elsie, and her mother had always entranced her with the same fascination, no more.

But sometimes the humming-bird scolded at her father, pecked at him, hummed all about him pecking. Then Elsie would run away, not fascinated any more. The scolding was always about money. Gloria needed money just as a humming-bird needs honey, and often there wasn’t enough.

They lived in New York near Washington Square. Elsie was cared for by nurses—such a fast-marching procession of nurses in the same chic blue uniforms, provided by the humming-bird, that Elsie remembered them as “nurse,” not as individuals. Her father was the constant human factor in her life, the one person to be counted on. Gloria was merely a dash of colour beyond the nursery door somewhere, a shrill sweet voice at the piano, a swish of silk on the stairs.

At eight, Elsie was sent to boarding school. But the school was in New York, and so her father still saw her almost every day, and on Saturdays he gave her and sometimes her friends “treats.” He took them to the theatre or picture galleries, or for beautiful walks in Central Park. Her mother never came to the school, but had her home once a month on Sundays for dinner. This was a grief to Elsie, not because she felt any need of her mother but simply because she would have been proud to show her schoolmates what a magnificent and fashionable mother she had; also she was humiliated by their curious questionings and pretended doubts as to whether she had a real mother at all. But Elsie was sure that her father was better than twenty mothers. She wouldn’t take a mother as a gift except for show purposes.

Kate writhed at Elsie’s harshness. “Oh, you don’t know, Elsie! Don’t talk so! How can you? It is terrible.”

“That’s what Ermina said when I talked to her about my mother. Ermina was my best friend, but she didn’t stay out her first year at school. Her mother died, and she went home for the funeral and never came back. I knew that she loved her mother just as much as I loved my father. I hid away in my room when they told me her mother had died. I pretended I was sick. It was awful. But when I heard her go downstairs, at the very last minute while they were saying ‘good-bye’ to her at the door, I rushed down in my nightgown. I kissed her and hugged her and we cried terribly. Miss Putnam, the principal of the school, never forgave me for having made Ermina cry when she had been brave and not cried at all before, and for having disgraced the school by standing in the door in my nightgown. But I have been glad ever since. I had to say ‘good-bye’ and that I was sorry. And I don’t think crying out loud was any worse than the crying _inside_ that Ermina must have been doing. Do you?”

Kate agreed with Elsie. She, too, was glad Elsie had gone to her friend in her sorrow, even if she had waited till the last minute for the courage.

Vacations had been spent either at camps or at Aunt Katherine’s. When they were spent at Aunt Katherine’s, her father was usually with her, having a vacation, too. And those were beautiful times.

Then, when she was twelve, came the terrible time. Nick had done badly in business. He confided this to Elsie because Gloria only wanted happy confidences, and besides, she was abroad, travelling with a party of friends. There was enough to pay his debts and leave him clear to start fresh, avoiding bankruptcy. But the debts paid, and his checking account reduced to zero, money must come from somewhere to go on with until business picked up. He knew a way in which two thousand dollars, if he only had it, could overnight be turned into ten thousand. He told Elsie about it, walking in Central Park, and said if he had only waited a little to pay his debts, and not acted so hastily in his fear of bankruptcy, everything would have been made right now. Aunt Katherine would loan him the two thousand, he felt sure, if he could only explain the nature of the speculation to her. But she was travelling somewhere in England, and there would never be time to get into touch with her. But he had the key to her safety vault in her Boston bank. He suddenly told Elsie that he was going to Boston and would not see her again until Sunday. She understood that he was going to borrow, on his own account, two thousand dollars from Aunt Katherine overnight, trusting to her unfailing generosity.

Nick wrote Aunt Katherine all about it on the train as he went. From the vault he took two thousand dollars’ worth of securities which could easily be replaced.

Aunt Katherine sailed for home before Nick’s troubled letter reached her in England, and the second letter, telling how the two thousand instead of blossoming into ten thousand had disappeared altogether, was never sent, because just as Nick was going out of his door to post it, the cablegram came announcing Gloria’s tragic death. That put all thoughts of the letter out of his mind, and when he did remember it he thought he had posted it as he meant to. It was found in the apartment months later by the people who sublet the place furnished, and simply dropped into a post box by them and sent to its address in England. It did not reach Miss Frazier until six months later.

Miss Frazier on her arrival in Boston, and after a visit to her bank, reported the missing securities to the police. Nick’s immediate apprehension followed. Miss Frazier was on a train bound for California when that most amazing bit of news reached her by telegram. She was shocked almost beyond reason, and so horrified that it was impossible for her to find any justification for her adopted nephew. She offered him no help and had no words for him that were not bitter ones, but she did write to offer his “innocent child” a home with her on the condition that she should not speak her father’s name for the term of his imprisonment, or correspond with him while she was in her care. That letter ended, “If I had been one half as level-headed as my niece Katherine or Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith about you, Nicholas, I should have protected you against such temptation, and we might have all been spared this catastrophe.”

In Elsie’s parting from her father he had shown her this letter. (Now Kate knew why Elsie had grown cold always at mention of Katherine!) He had begged her to accept her aunt’s conditions. Indeed there was nothing else she could do, for her mother’s relations were now more estranged from them than ever. They had not written one word, even bitter ones.

“Oh, Elsie! That must have been dreadful, not being allowed even to speak of your father, to act as though he were dead!”

Elsie looked at her, her eyes black with remembered grief. “It was. I was so lonely for him, Kate, I expected to _die_.”

In time Nick’s two letters about the “overnight loan,” forwarded and reforwarded, had arrived in Oakdale. Then Aunt Katherine began to understand a little how his deed had not been so pitchy black as it had seemed in the first shock. He had done what she had always wanted him to do, counted on her understanding and generosity. It had been a crime—even Nick had accepted that judgment from the very first—and an utterly foolish and desperate deed, but now Aunt Katherine was sorry she had not lifted a hand to keep him from paying the penalty of imprisonment. She looked about to see what could be done, and ultimately was able to set wheels in motion that brought about his release at the end of two years instead of three. But she had not told Elsie. She had not been able to bring herself to speak of Elsie’s father to her at all.

Nick wrote Miss Frazier asking her to meet him at a certain spot on the Common in Boston the day he was to be released. He wanted to discuss Elsie and what they were to do about her. He knew that his appearance in Oakdale would cause Miss Frazier painful embarrassment. He meant to avoid that for her. But when he had waited for hours at the place he had designated and she had not come, he had grown desperate. He was obsessed with a fear that Elsie might be sick. Why, she might be dead, almost, for all he knew. He had not had one word from her in two years. He boarded a train, not stopping to leave his suitcase at a hotel or check it in the South Station, and started for Oakdale.

Elsie was just coming down the steps of Aunt Katherine’s house as her father got out of the taxi he had hired to avoid being seen in Oakdale and to gain speed to his destination. Aunt Katherine was away and most of the servants, for it was Thursday afternoon—a week ago last Thursday. Father and daughter had longed to be alone, unobserved by any curious eyes. The orchard house occurred to them as the best place to talk. They went around the house and managed to reach it, unseen, through the gardens. They had climbed in at a window at the back. Elsie was beside herself with happiness, and Nick was like a boy in his joy and relief about her.

He told Elsie that the first year in prison he had written “The King of the Fairies.”

“There was so much in it that he had told me about the ‘other side of things’ and the _more_ life that even stones have that we don’t see, that when the book was published and I looked into it at the bookshop I knew right away it must be Father’s. He had always wanted to write. At the very first sentence I knew. It was like a letter from him. I read it and read it and read it. Do you wonder I didn’t want you to snatch it for yourself that very first morning, Kate?”

The second book was almost finished when Nick came out of prison. Only a chapter remained. The publishers had promised an advance on the royalties as soon as the manuscript was sent them. The first book had already made over two thousand dollars. So the two decided, between them, that Nick should live in the orchard house for a week, long enough to finish the book, send it to the publishers and get their check. Then he would leave the two thousand dollars, the earnings from the first book, for Aunt Katherine. That was exactly what he had taken from her vault. With the new check of five hundred dollars, he and Elsie would go away together. He could write in the orchard house undisturbed, and without any one’s knowing he was there. Elsie could bring him some food now and then. But they would not run away together until he could leave the two thousand that really belonged to Aunt Katherine behind them.

Kate interrupted there. “But how can you! How can you treat Aunt Katherine so?”

“It’s this way. I’ve made Father see that she doesn’t like me. She is awfully kind, but that’s not liking. If I vanish, it will be just a relief to her. But she wouldn’t let me go, probably, if I told her. She would argue and try to keep me because it was her duty. Even Father sees that. Well, the new check has come. That was my special delivery yesterday. Father wrote Aunt Katherine a long letter and put the two thousand dollars in checks from his publishers into it. I’ve pinned the letter to her pincushion for her to read when she gets back to-night. Father hopes you’ll stay on here and your mother come back, too, and everything be set right at last. We don’t belong in the Frazier family at all, you know. We are sort of vagabonds, different, Father and I. Father thinks the quarrel between Aunt Katherine and your mother was in some way because of him. When we vanish, it will come right.”

“Oh, but it won’t, and it wasn’t, and you aren’t. Imagine you a vagabond!” Kate exclaimed.

“That’s the beautiful clothes Aunt Katherine gives me. They make me look just like anybody. But really underneath I belong in a tent or something like that. Anyway, I’d rather tramp the country with my father than live in a palace with any one else!”

Kate leaned toward her, taking her hand, not timidly now but with assurance. “So would I,” she agreed, heartily. “So would any one, he’s so splendid and wonderful. And we are friends now, you and I, aren’t we? Will you write to me when you have gone?”

Tears brimmed Elsie’s eyes. “Really? Do you want me to write? Of course I will. Let’s be best friends, chums. Even when I’m in California!”

Kate was embarrassed by the tears, but she was enraptured, too. She was tingling with happiness, for she was face to face with the vanishing comrade at last.

“Why didn’t we feel this way sooner?” she asked with reason.

“That was my fault. I’m sorry now.”

The girls had almost forgotten why they were watching the rain-curtained orchard. But they were recalled sharply to the affairs of the minute by Effie’s voice in the hall not far from their door. She was calling down a stairway to Isadora.

“Tell Julia Miss Frazier’s just come in and will be here for dinner, after all.”

The girls started. Elsie sprang to her feet. Kate still had her hand. “Don’t worry,” she said, quickly. “I will help you to get out without her seeing. You can go later to-night.”

“But Father’s note! Pinned to her pincushion! She will read it now! Oh, why did she come back!”

“I’ll go to her room and try to get the note before she notices it,” Kate offered. “You just wait here. I’ll do my best.”

“It’s on top of the tall bureau against the wall between the windows. Oh, do you suppose you _can_, Kate?”

As Kate hurried through the passageways toward Miss Frazier’s bedroom she wondered whether she really could. What excuse should she give for disturbing Aunt Katherine while she was dressing?

There was no time to think that out. Aunt Katherine called “Come,” almost before Kate’s knuckles tapped the door.