CHAPTER XX

A FAREWELL IN THE DARK

Miss Frazier was sitting before her dressing table attired in a blue silk dressing-robe.

“Nothing the matter, Kate?” she asked, the minute that she realized it was Kate and not one of the servants who had entered. “Bertha tells me Elsie is better. I am glad I was able to get back for dinner, after all. Both you and Elsie have been on my mind. Was it a dull day?”

“No, not dull a bit.” If Aunt Katherine only knew how very far from dull!

Aunt Katherine put down the comb with which she had been “fluffing” her hair. She looked at Kate questioningly. Why was her niece here, and looking so discomfited, at the dressing hour?

Kate had already spied the note, across the room, pinned to the pincushion on the bureau’s top. To the corner of her eye it appeared as big as a flag! How had Miss Frazier ever avoided seeing it? It fairly shrieked in the room.

“Well?” Her aunt was expecting something of her. She must say something to make her presence reasonable. But what excuse could she ever make to go ’way across the big room to that bureau? In this plight Kate blurted out the news that her mother was there.

“Your mother!”

Aunt Katherine seemed frozen for an instant in her surprise.

“Not exactly here, but she will be in a few minutes, I think,” Kate stumbled on. “I wired for her to come.”

“Why, Kate! Has anything gone wrong to-day? Elsie——”

“No, nothing. Oh, I can’t tell you now. Will you wait a little while, until she’s here? I can’t explain anything yet.”

“What time is she arriving?”

Kate put her hand into her pocket and pulled out the yellow telegram. “Here, this tells,” she said, vaguely. Now, oh, now while Aunt Katherine was studying out that long message was the time to rescue Elsie’s letter. Kate made a move toward the bureau. But Miss Frazier moved with her! Her lorgnette lay beside the pincushion! Was there ever such luck!

She picked it up, and read, moving the glass along the paper.

She passed over the ambiguity to her of most of the message and fastened her attention upon the time of arrival stated there. “Five-five!” she exclaimed. “The train must be over an hour late. More than that. It’s half-past six now. Ring the bell, please, Kate, and tell Isadora to send Timothy to the station. He knows your mother and will bring her up here in the car when the train does get in. That back-way train is seldom on schedule, but this is unusually late. Tell Isadora to have an extra place laid, too.”

Kate went over to the door and rang the servants’ bell there. Bertha, not Isadora, answered. Kate stepped out into the hall and whispered quickly, “Tell Effie to set another place. My mother will be here for dinner.” The directions for Timothy were, of course, not given. Then Kate went back to her aunt, with how beating a heart!

Aunt Katherine was standing with her face turned away, reading Nick’s letter. Kate never thought of fleeing. She stayed stock still, waiting for the storm, and deciding that even now Aunt Katherine need not know that Elsie had not yet gone. Kate expected something quite scenic from her aunt’s temper. Katherine had warned her that it was rare but devastating.

After ages and æons, to Kate’s tense mind, Aunt Katherine folded the letter, check and all. Then their eyes met. The one thing that the expression in her aunt’s eyes told Kate was that she was surprised, though _glad_, to find her still there. She stretched both her hands to her.

“Kate, Kate,” she said with a rising inflection of happiness in her voice. “I’ve been all wrong, wrong about Elsie’s father, but even more wrong about Elsie! She has proved that by running away with her father. The blessed darling! The poor lamb!”

Kate felt that she was on a merry-go-round of surprises. “You are glad she has run away?”

“How can I be anything but rejoiced!”

Kate turned a little cold at that. “And you won’t try to stop them?” she asked.

“No, no need. Nick says he will give me their address as soon as they have one. Then I shall go to them, wherever it is. I will bring them back. Kate, she must _adore_ her father! And all the while, just because she kept the agreement not to speak of him, I thought her indifferent to his sufferings, and unnatural. Why, from this, she must have suffered more than he.” Miss Frazier tapped the folded letter with her lorgnette. “He says that when he looked in at your party and saw Elsie so beautifully gowned, and having such a good time, his heart failed him; he decided that he must not take her away from all this. But Elsie herself made him see that she would never be happy anywhere but with him no matter how poor they were. It was Elsie who insisted on this harebrained scheme of running away! Elsie, who I thought hadn’t a grain of spirit or affection! Why, I’m just turned topsy-turvy by it all! Bless that poor child! And Nick wrote ‘The King of the Fairies.’ I ought to have guessed that instantly. Bless him, I say, too, the poor, abused, misguided poet. Do you remember St. Francis? You know he, too——”

But Miss Frazier broke off in her song of praise.

“You poor child, you,” she cried, meaning Kate. “This must all be a mystery. We’ll wait till your mother is here. Then we can talk it all over.” She hugged Kate as she spoke, much as though she herself were a young girl in the most exuberant of spirits.

“I shall wear my black lace,” she said, pushing Kate laughingly away from her. “We must be gorgeous for your mother. Hurry into your pink organdie. Why, she may be at the door this minute.”

Thus freed, Kate flew to Elsie. Elsie was waiting, almost ill with anxiety. “Did you manage it?” she asked.

“No. And she has read the letter. But she is _glad_, Elsie. There’s just to be no trouble about your getting away with your father at all.”

“Didn’t I tell you!” Elsie exclaimed. “It’s just as I knew. She is glad to be rid of me.”

“We must plan quickly, though. How will you get out? It’s so dark now you can’t see the orchard well at all. Let’s plan.”

Bertha was there, flushed and nervous. That morning Elsie had found it necessary to confide the secret of her father’s being in the orchard house to Bertha, if he was to have any breakfast or lunch that day at all. They had let the food supply get very low, she and her father, because, until he had looked in at the party, they had expected to fly last night. Bertha was horrified at finding herself part of the intrigue, but there was no help for it since Elsie could always “Wind her around her little finger.” Now, the almost distracted maid promised to stand by Elsie until the end. It would be the end for her as well as Elsie, for she would certainly lose her place to-morrow, and her character with it. For if Miss Frazier did not become aware for herself that Bertha had taken food to Nick in the orchard house this morning, and protected Elsie from the betrayal of her plans, Bertha meant to confess these things to her.

The three in conclave now decided that Elsie should go, after Kate and Miss Frazier were in the drawing-room, to the window seat on the stair landing. There she could conceal herself behind the curtains with her suitcase until Kate came out into the hall below, on some pretext to be found by her, and whistled softly. The whistle would mean that Katherine had come in and that Elsie could slip away to the orchard house unobserved.

All this was rather fun for Kate except for the sorry fact that when it was over she would have lost a comrade. To help stage a real runaway—well, it doesn’t happen every day that one may be so at the centre of exciting events.

With Bertha’s help Kate was dashing into her organdie while Elsie stood in a balcony window watching the orchard. Elsie had come in to be near Kate until the very last minute. But when a knock suddenly sounded on Kate’s door Elsie wisely whisked away into her own room.

“Come,” Kate called in a tremulous voice. Was it her mother? No, it was Aunt Katherine, and very fortunate it was that Elsie had been spry in her whisking.

“I see you are dressed,” Miss Frazier said. “Come down, with me, then, and we will be together in the drawing-room when your mother arrives. I have ordered dinner delayed for her.”

Kate thought quickly. “Just a minute,” she said. “There’s something in Elsie’s room I need. Will you wait?”

Kate closed the door behind her as though by accident. But Elsie was not in the room. Kate looked all around but it was quite empty. The vanishing comrade had vanished, physically this time. There was the closet door. Was she hiding there? Yes, Kate heard a stir and saw dimly through the hanging dresses—expensive dresses given Elsie by Aunt Katherine, which she was not taking with her—Elsie herself squeezed back against the farthest wall. Kate closed the closet door behind her and groped her way across the dark closet. “It’s I, Kate,” she whispered loudly.

The girls touched hands in the dark. They hugged and kissed each other, mostly on noses and ears, but no matter; it was a grief-stricken parting. “Good-bye, good-bye,” they whispered, and Kate said, “Write to me from California.” But she must hurry back before it came into Miss Frazier’s head to follow her in here with the idea of going through Elsie’s door into the hall. She ran back to her own room and in her anxiety created the impression of a small cyclone appearing.

Miss Frazier looked with some surprise on the violence of her return. Then her eyes softened. Kate had not given thought to drying her tears. “You mustn’t take it like this,” Aunt Katherine said, putting her arm through Kate’s as they went down the passageways together toward the big upper hall. “Elsie is happier than she has been in a very long time; she is off with one of the most satisfying companions in the world. Nick will take good care of her, infinitely better care than was ever taken here by me, for he _knows her mind_. And oh, Kate, we mustn’t let your mother run away with you, too. Then I _should_ be alone! You won’t be without companionship. There are the Dentons just next door, and plenty of others who will be wanting to know you now.”

“But they aren’t Elsie,” Kate responded, shamelessly using her handkerchief, as the tears would keep flooding.