CHAPTER XXI

LIKE THE STARS

Miss Frazier was too excitedly nervous to take up a book or knitting when they were in the drawing-room. She wandered about, looking at the pictures on the walls, picking up magazines from tables to stare at them vacantly and replace them again, changing the arrangements of flowers, and all the time she was waiting for the sound of the opening front door and Katherine’s step in the hall. Kate was listening, too, but not in that direction. She expected her mother to come through the gardens and in at one of the French doors, closed now, with the rain beating against them. Kate was so absorbed with the consciousness of Elsie waiting up on the stair landing for her chance to escape that she forgot her mother had no umbrella and that she might be waiting in the orchard house until this particular shower passed. She merely wondered what was keeping her all this time, and what would happen when she and Aunt Katherine met. Aunt Katherine would certainly be surprised when she caught sight of the expected traveller through the glass doors on the terrace. There would be questions and explanations about that. Nick would have warned Katherine, of course, not to give away the secret of his being there; but then what _would_ she give as her explanation to Aunt Katherine?

Would she be expecting to find Aunt Katherine here at all, though? Wouldn’t Nick have acquainted her with the fact of Aunt Katherine’s supposed absence? In that case Katherine, unprepared, would be hard put to it to give any excuse for entering through the gardens from the back, rather than by the front door, ushered in by Isadora. Kate was on tenter-hooks. She felt that it was she herself who had caused the muddle. But what could she have done differently? If she had told Aunt Katherine, up in her room, that Katherine was here already, only out in the orchard house, Aunt Katherine would certainly have gone straight out there, and then what would have happened to Nick and Elsie?

It was a bad ten minutes for Kate. She sat with a book open before her—what book she never knew—her eyes glued to the page, her ears cocked for a sound beyond the glass doors. Aunt Katherine stopped before her in her wanderings once or twice, about to speak, but she had too much respect for a reader to break into such obvious absorption as was Kate’s.

Now Miss Frazier was standing looking through the glass of one of the doors into the rain-swept garden. Kate was seized with an idea. She must run up to Elsie in the window seat—she must manage it without her aunt’s noticing, now—and send Elsie to the orchard house to warn those two that Miss Frazier had returned. After that, responsibility would be theirs. They might fix up some scheme among them. Kate rose, softly, and took a step toward the hall. But she was halted by an exclamation from Aunt Katherine.

Miss Frazier had not turned; she was still looking out through the glass. Kate, looking, too, saw two figures just at the edge of the orchard. It was her mother and Nick. Well, she could do nothing now. They certainly were counting on Aunt Katherine’s absence, for they were coming toward the house. They were running toward the house, “between the drops,” dashing like school children. They were holding hands, and Nick was always a step ahead, rather dragging Katherine. Oh, why hadn’t Kate thought about an umbrella! They were laughing! Kate heard their laughter through the glass. So did Aunt Katherine. Her face, taken at that moment, would have made a perfect mask to personify Surprise.

She opened the doors, and Katherine and Nick blew through them like two drenched leaves. The rain had blurred the glass, and the running pair had thought it was Kate standing there watching them and letting them in. When they saw that it was Aunt Katherine they stood and simply _stared_, with almost no expression, still gripping each other’s hands.

Miss Frazier’s first words were unexpected ones. “Where is Elsie?” she asked Nick. That was all, just “Where is Elsie?” as though that, for the instant, was the thing of prime importance to her. It was Kate who could answer, though. Timidly she said, “Elsie’s up on the stair landing.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. I thought she might be in search of a father in the South Station or some place. I thought, Nick, you two, you and Elsie, had run away.”

Nick said, “We were going to. It is Katherine who has stopped us at the very minute.” He still held Katherine’s hand. Now he turned and looked at her. She looked back at him. Both Aunt Katherine and Kate, seeing what passed between their eyes, gasped. But it forewarned them, and Katherine’s words when she spoke were only an echo of what they had seen.

“Nick and I are getting married, Aunt Katherine. We didn’t know you were here, or we wouldn’t have burst in like this. We had come to tell our children. Won’t you get Elsie, Kate?”

“You and Nick marrying? So at last you’ve come to your senses!” That was Aunt Katherine.

“Yes. And oh, Aunt Katherine, she knows everything about me, and still she wants to.”

“Well, of course she knows everything about you. I fancy _that’s_ had publicity enough. But if this is the way you feel, Katherine, why didn’t you write me one word when Nick got himself into trouble? Or since? Your silence has been as cruel as any part of it all. It said plainer than words, ‘Like Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, I expected this sort of thing.’”

“Why, Aunt Katherine! How can you? If I had known Nick was in prison, that something so terrible had happened, I should have written you right away. No, I should have come. Trouble like that would have brought us all together. But how could I know, when nobody told me?” Katherine’s beautiful eyes were like a grieved, accusing child’s. “And what hard-shelled little creatures we are! Why couldn’t my _soul_ have told me?”

“Don’t talk about your soul telling you.” Aunt Katherine was brusque. “What about your eyes? Don’t you ever read the papers?”

Katherine dropped her head. She had probably often dropped it so in the past before her aunt. “You know,” she said, softly apologetic, “I never did read the papers as you do, Aunt Katherine, or keep up with current events.”

Aunt Katherine laughed. It was a nice laugh. Kate visualized their brook in Ashland, when the ice was dissolving under the sun in the spring. (Yes, she did. It may seem a strange time for her mind to wander so far, but the fact remains. She saw the brook that zigzagged through the meadows back of their barn-house, as she had seen it last spring, its edges still frosted with ice, but down the centre the clear, laughing water coursing.)

“Well, the news of Nick would hardly come under ‘current events’,” Aunt Katherine was saying. “But I do remember now that you never did take a proper interest in the papers. It never entered my head, though, that you wouldn’t have learned of this from a dozen sources.”

Kate had been backing away toward the door, meaning to go for Elsie. But there was no need. Elsie had heard her father’s voice the minute he had come into the drawing-room. She had stolen down into the room now, and gripped Kate’s hand. Together the two girls moved back toward the three who were earnestly talking, still standing near the open door with the rain, all unobserved, discolouring the polished floor.

Aunt Katherine was asking Katherine another question. “Why didn’t you take Nick seventeen years ago?” she asked. “You seem sure enough of yourself now. He wasn’t good enough for you then. Is he good enough now after all that has happened?”

Again Katherine cried, “How can you!” But quickly she amended it. “Yes, you have a right. You know yourself, Aunt Katherine, what was the matter with me. It was pride of birth, blindness, love of luxury, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith’s head-shakings, a jumble of folly. You know perfectly what sort of a girl I was. But now I’m different. Now I’m nearer to being good enough for Nick.”

“Love of luxury!” Miss Frazier picked on that. “You want me to believe your horrid description of yourself? If you loved luxury so much, why have you been living as you have all these years, accepting nothing of the luxuries I longed to give you?”

“But I tell you I changed. At twenty-two I was different from nineteen. I welcomed poverty then. When they told me that Kate and I had actually nothing to live on, I was delighted.”

“So it has been by way of penance, your hard life since?”

“If you want to call it that. It’s been fun, too.”

“But not fun for me.” Aunt Katherine’s eyes filled with tears. For a person of Aunt Katherine’s character to cry openly like that was as extraordinary a happening as though she had suddenly begun walking on her hands. Only Katherine dared speak to her or try to offer comfort. She put her arms around her shoulders, and led her to a chair. There she made her sit down, and knelt by her side, leaning her head against her arm, stroking her hand.

“Dear, dear, Aunt Katherine. Don’t, don’t,” she besought. “We can’t bear it. Oh, what have I done to you! What have we both done to you, Nick and I? Forgive us, Aunt Katherine. Love us again.”

At that, even in the midst of her tears, Aunt Katherine laughed, and as before Kate remembered the brook. “Again!” Aunt Katherine exclaimed. “Did you think I had ever stopped loving either of you mad children?”

Nick nodded. “_I_ have forfeited your affection right enough. I understand why you couldn’t meet me, Aunt Katherine, two weeks ago when I asked you to. At least I understand now. I shouldn’t have asked it. But how else were we to decide about Elsie?”

Aunt Katherine looked up at her adopted nephew, remembering. “But of course I did go to meet you,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t! I read the day, though, ‘Thursday’ instead of ‘Tuesday.’ It’s not often I blunder so stupidly. Then I made frantic efforts to locate you. But you had vanished. There wasn’t a trace. I set private detectives to work. To-day they took me all the way to Springfield on a wild-goose chase. They were sure they had located you there. Clever, those detectives!”

Aunt Katherine dried her eyes thoroughly as she spoke. She was scornful of her tears. “That excursion has tired me,” she explained. “The disappointment of it. I was so downhearted. Then having you suddenly here again, right here at home, without warning, safe and happy—well, perhaps a sphinx would cry.”

It was Nick’s turn to kneel and rub his cheek against Aunt Katherine’s shoulder. She lifted a hand and stroked his hair. Kate, too, got as close to her aunt as she could. Only Elsie stood aloof, for an instant not in any way part of the group. It was Aunt Katherine who beckoned her, and took her hand.

“Elsie,” she said, “I have been thinking you hard and selfish because you kept my rule not to mention your father. I have wanted to speak with you of him, but every time I led up to it I thought you drew away. It seemed to me that you were suffering, not for him, but for your own wounded vanity. Now I understand better. Perhaps, in time, you will forgive me.”

Then it was Elsie’s turn to cry, and she did it so whole-heartedly that the family devoted its complete attention to calming her.

It was later that Miss Frazier exclaimed as though she had just remembered it: “So you two children are to be married, and Katherine become a Frazier again! I wonder what Oakdale will say to that turn of affairs!”

“If you really care what they say, Aunt Katherine”—Katherine spoke quickly—“need they know at all? Ashland society notes will hardly penetrate here. And you’ve had quite enough to bear.”

“Don’t think you could ever hide such a famous author as Nick has become, with only his first book, under a bushel for long, my dear. And as a matter of fact, quite apart from my joy that you are acting like a sane girl at last, and for once, I shall be proud to death of the marriage. I must call up the _Gazette_ to-morrow, before ten. You remind me, Kate.” As well as pride there was a gleam of battle from Aunt Katherine’s eyes.

“And it really doesn’t matter a bit what they do say, except for you, Aunt Katherine,” Katherine offered. “There are four of us now, four in this family. Enough of us to stand together, I should think, and not ask much from society.”

“Four? Five!” Kate left Elsie’s side on the divan to perch on the arm of her great-aunt’s chair. “Why, five of us are quite enough to start a colony and make our own society.”

“Bless you, dear child, for counting me in,” Miss Frazier said with sheerest gratitude.

“But of course, we all count you in, and there _are_ five of us,” Katherine cried, “only we don’t want you to sacrifice too much.” And that was the signal for a second close formation of happy people about Aunt Katherine’s chair.

“Sacrifice! Why, all I want in the world is my family. Don’t talk about sacrifice!”

It was much later that Aunt Katherine began wondering about dinner. What had become of it? Nick and Katherine had utterly forgotten that one does usually dine sometime before bedtime. They laughed at the suddenness of their return to earth.

“Ring the bell, Kate, and see if the servants are dead or asleep,” Miss Frazier said.

But at that instant Effie appeared in the door. She had heard Miss Frazier’s words. “Julia put dinner off an hour,” she explained. “It’s served now.”

The “now,” however, was almost lost in Katherine’s sudden pounce upon the servant and her hearty handshake.

“Julia often takes a good deal upon herself,” Miss Frazier observed, as linked with Katherine she led their little procession toward the dining-room.

And their first view of the table justified Aunt Katherine in this criticism of Julia. The polished surface of the cherished antique was hidden under an enormous damask cloth. But worse than that, the jade dish with its exquisite floating blossoms had given way to a huge, and to Miss Frazier’s mind hideous, cut-glass punch-bowl full of roses, dozens and dozens of roses, pink, red, and yellow!

“Why, they have made it into a festival,” Katherine cried, surveying the effect. “Smell those roses.”

“See them, rather,” Miss Frazier responded. “It’s the servants. They must have known you both were here; and yes, there are two extra places set.”

“It’s Julia, the lamb!” Katherine declared. “Bless her dear heart. I saw her looking from the kitchen window as we ran in. I’d go and kiss her this second, but she wouldn’t approve of that until after dinner. Julia’s a lion for etiquette.”

“Please be so considerate as not to begin spoiling the servants, Katherine.”

Nick and Kate and Elsie looked at Aunt Katherine, surprised. But Katherine simply answered lightly, “It’s they who spoil me.” She accepted the tone of her aunt’s command without dismay. She knew that the apparent sharpness had been only Aunt Katherine’s old habit of criticism reasserting itself toward a beloved niece, who to her mind could never possibly be anything but the child she had “brought up.” Katherine had begun to understand her aunt to-night for the first time, to see her in the “other light” that the King of the Fairies knew.

“You’d better excuse yourself to wash your hands and remove that odd-looking rain-soaked tam,” Aunt Katherine picked on her again, the minute they were seated. “Use my bathroom, it’s the nearest. And hurry right back, or this surprisingly sumptuous-looking soup that Julia has provided will get cold.”

Katherine, obediently leaving the room, looked rather like a humble child, but Nick’s eyes, as he stood, followed as though hers might have been the departure of an empress.

* * * * * * * *

Late that night the doors between the girls’ rooms blew shut in the wind that was clearing the air of storm and rain. Never mind about the doors, though; the spirit of Miss Frazier’s rule rather than the letter was being kept to-night. For Kate and Elsie were curled up within whispering distance of each other on Kate’s bed. Both were in dressing gowns; they were supposed to have been asleep for an hour past.

“I’ve never been abroad, or even anywhere out of New England,” Kate was whispering. “You went with Aunt Katherine last summer. Will it be so wonderful as I expect?”

“We were only in England. And it will be a million times more wonderful than then, for we shall be together. Why, two weeks from now, sooner, we ought to be in Switzerland.”

“And two weeks ago we had never heard of each other,” Kate added.

“And one day ago,” Elsie took it up, “if you had told me that I would spend the rest of the summer away from my father, travelling in Europe with you and Aunt Katherine, I would have said you were crazy.”

“Oh, Elsie,” Kate asked quickly, “I haven’t said anything, but is that awfully hard for you, leaving them in Ashland, while we go so far away?”

“Not any more awful for me to leave my father than for you to leave your mother, I guess. Anyway, when _they_ like the plan so much, we’d be funny daughters not to be pleased, too.”

“You say ‘My father, your mother’—Oh, Elsie, do you realize in just a day or two it will be ‘our father and our mother’?”

Elsie nodded. “Yes, Kate,” she said. “You have given me a mother and I have given you a father, and now we are a family. I feel, do you know, as though my heart might burst!”

“Don’t let it,” Kate warned quickly. “You’ll need it strong for climbing the Alps! Imagine! Oh, how glorious it all is!”

“And when we come home again and live in that funny little barn-house of yours—I am thinking of that,” Elsie whispered. “That will be better than travelling.”

“The Hart boys are going to be simply flabbergasted,” Kate said, remembering them. “They kept telling me to bring you home with me, but they never guessed you’d be my sister when you did come.”

“But do you think they will want to have anything to do with me?” Elsie asked, diffidently.

“Why not, I should like to know?”

“Well, you see, that letter they wrote——”

Kate’s face reddened. “What a creature I was! Of course, they will forget all about that now. Even if you weren’t my sister and Mother’s daughter, they’d like you awfully just the first second they saw you. They couldn’t help it.”

Before going to bed, finally, the girls put out the lights and went out on to Kate’s flowery balcony to look at the clearing night. They stood close together, their arms about each other’s shoulders, their dressing gowns billowing in the fresh wind. Elsie lifted her face up toward the sky. “It’s going to be a fair day to-morrow,” she affirmed. “See the stars!”

Kate’s face was lifted, too. “Yes,” she said. “Do you remember what the King of the Fairies told Hazel and her lover about the magic they had made their very own, how it’s safer than the stars from troubling? Well, do you know, _as a family_, I think we are going to have a lot of that magic.”

THE END

THE VANISHING COMRADE _by Ethel Cook Eliot_

Kate Marshall had plenty of boys for friends and a very companionable mother. But when she visited her interesting Great Aunt Katherine she did hope to find in Elsie a girl comrade of her own age to share her dreams and enthusiasms.

However, this new comrade had a disturbing way of vanishing unexpectedly.

And it all centered about the orchard house, where windows were found open, doors were found locked, and lights flickered at night.

Parties and pretty clothes, misunderstandings and unusual mystery make this an unusual story that girls will enjoy from start to finish.

Another of Mrs. Eliot’s distinctive books for girls.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Vanishing Comrade, by Ethel Cook Eliot