CHAPTER XXVI
OVER THE FENCE IS OUT
"WELL!" she said, and stood staring. Then she smiled--I guess our faceswere funny.
"May I come in?" she asked, and without waiting she came in and closedthe door. "You DO look cozy!" she said, and shook herself free of snow.
Mr. Dick had turned white. He got up with his eyes on her, and twice heopened his mouth and couldn't speak. He backed, still watching her, tohis wife, and stood in front of her, as if to protect her.
Mr. Sam got his voice first.
"B--bad night for a walk," he said.
"Frightful!" she said. "I've been buried to my knees. May I sit down?"To those of us who knew, her easy manner had something horrible in it.
"Sorry there are no chairs, Julia," Mr. Pierce said. "Sit on the cot,won't you?"
"Who IS it?" Mrs. Dick asked from, as you may say, her eclipse. She andMiss Summers were the only calm ones in the room.
"I--I don't know," Mr. Dick stammered, but the next moment Miss Julia,from the cot, looked across at him and grinned.
"Well, Dicky!" she said. "Who'd have thought it!"
"You said you didn't know her!" his wife said from behind him.
"Who'd have thought wha--what?" he asked with bravado.
"All this!" Miss Julia waved her hand around the room, with its barewalls, and blankets over the windows to keep the light in and the coldout, and the circle of us sitting around on sand boxes from the linksand lawn rollers. "To find you here, all snug in your own home, withyour household gods and a wife." Nobody could think of anything to say."That is," she went on, "I believe there is a wife. Good heavens, Dicky,it isn't Minnie?"
He stepped aside at that, disclosing Mrs. Dick on her box, with herchildish eyes wide open.
"There--there IS a wife, Julia," he said. "This is her--she."
Well, she'd come out to make mischief--it was written all over her whenshe came in the door, but when Mr. Dick presented his wife, frightenedas he was and still proud of her, and Mrs. Dick smiled in her prettyway, Miss Summers just walked across and looked down at her with a queerlook on her face. I shut my eyes and waited for the crash, but nothingcame, and when I opened them again there were the two women holdinghands and Miss Summers smiling a sort of crooked grin at Mr. Dick.
"I ought to be very angry with your husband," she said. "I--well, Inever expected him to marry without my being among those present. Butsince he has done it--! Dick, you wretched boy, you took advantage of mybeing laid up with the mumps!"
"Mumps!" Mrs. Dick said. "Why, he has just had them himself!" She lookedaround the circle suspiciously, and every one of us looked as guilty asif he had been caught with the mumps concealed around him somewhere.
"I didn't have real mumps," Mr. Dick explained. "It was only--er--aswelling."
"You SAID it was mumps, and even now you hate pickles!"
Mr. Pierce had edged over to Miss Summers and patted her shoulder.
"Be a good sport, Julia," he whispered.
She threw off his hand.
"I'm being an idiot!" she said angrily. "Dick's an ass, and he's treatedme like a villain, but look at that baby! It will be twenty years beforeshe has to worry about her weight."
"I never cared for pickles," Mr. Dick was saying with dignity. "Thedoctor said--"
"I think we'd better be going." Miss Patty got up and gathered up hercloak. But if she meant to break up the party Miss Summers was notready.
"If you don't mind," she said, "I'll stay. I'm frozen, and I've got togo home and sleep with my window up. You're lucky," she went on to theDickys. "I dare say the air in here would scare us under a microscope,but at least it is warm."
The Van Alstynes made a move to go, but Mr. Dicky frantically gesturedto them not to leave him alone, and Mrs. Sam sat down again sulkily. Mr.Pierce picked up his cap.
"I'll take you back," he said to Miss Patty, and his face was fairlyglowing. But Miss Patty slipped her arm through mine.
"Come, Minnie, Mr. Pierce is going to take us," she said.
"I'd--I'd rather go alone," I said.
"Nonsense."
"I'm not ready. I've got to gather up these dishes," I objected.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the glow dying out of Mr.Pierce's face. But Miss Patty took my arm and led me to the door.
"Let them gather up their own dishes," she said. "Dolly, you ought to beashamed to let Minnie slave for you the way she does. Good night,everybody."
I did my best to leave them alone on the way back, but Miss Patty stuckclose to my heels. It was snowing, and the going was slow.
For the first five minutes she only spoke once.
"And so Miss Summers and Dicky Carter are old friends!"
"It appears so," Mr. Pierce said.
"She's rather magnanimous, under the circumstances," Miss Patty remarkeddemurely.
"Under what circumstances?"
I heard her laugh a little, behind me.
"Never mind," she said. "You needn't tell me anything you don't care to.But what a stew you must all have been in!"
There was a minute's silence behind me, and then Mr. Pierce laughed too.
"Stew!" he said. "For the last few days I've been either paralyzedwith fright or electrified into wild bursts of mendacity. And I'm notnaturally a liar."
"Really!" she retorted. "What an actor you are!"
They laughed together at that, and I gained a little on them. At thecorner where the path skirted the deer park and turned toward the houseI lost them altogether and I floundered on alone. But I had not gonetwenty feet when I stopped suddenly. About fifty yards ahead a lanternwas coming toward me through the snow, and I could hear a man's voice,breathless and gasping.
"Set it down," it said. "The damned thing must be filled with lead." Itsounded like Thoburn.
"It's the snow," another voice replied, Mr. von Inwald's. "I told you itwould take two trips."
"Yes," Thoburn retorted, breathing in groans. "Stay up all night to getthe blamed stuff here, and then get up at dawn for a cold bath anda twenty-mile walk and an apple for breakfast. Ugh, my shoulder isdislocated."
I turned and flew back to Miss Patty and Pierce. They had stopped in theshelter of the fence corner and Mr. Pierce was on his knees in front ofher! I was so astounded that I forgot for the moment what had broughtme.
"Just a second," he was saying. "It's ice on the heel."
"Please get up off your knees, you'll take cold."
"Never had a cold. I'll scrape it off with my knife. Why don't you wearovershoes?"
"I never have a cold!" she retorted. "Why, Minnie, is that you?"
"Quick," I panted. "Thoburn and Mr. von Inwaldcoming--basket--lantern--warn the shelter-house!"
"Great Scott!" Mr. Pierce said. "Here, you girls crawl over the fence:you'll be hidden there. I'll run back and warn them."
The lantern was swinging again. Mr. Thoburn's grumbling came to usthrough the snow, monotonous and steady.
"I can't climb the fence!" Miss Patty said pitifully. But Mr. Pierce hadgone.
I reached my basket through the bars and climbed the fence in a hurry.Miss Patty had got almost to the top and was standing there on onesnow-covered rail, staring across at me through the darkness.
"I can't, Minnie," she whispered hopelessly. "I never could climb afence, and in this skirt--!"
"Quick!" I said in a low tone. The lantern was very close. "Put your legover."
She did, and sat there looking down at me like a scared baby.
"Now the other."
"I--I can't!" she whispered. "If I put them both over I'll fall."
"Hurry!"
With a little grunt she put the other foot over, sat a minute withagony in her face and her arms out, then she slid off with a squealand brought up in a sitting position inside the fence corner. I droppedbeside her.
"What was that noise?" said Mr. Thoburn, almost upon us. "Something'smoving inside that fence corner."
"It's them deers,"
Mike's voice this time. We could make out the threefigures. "Darned nuisance, them deers is. They'd have been shot longago if the spring-house girl hadn't objected. She thinks she's the wholecheese around here."
"Set it down again," Mr. von Inwald panted. We heard the rattle ofbottles as they put down the basket, and the next instant Thoburn's fathand was resting on the rail of the fence over our heads. I could feelMiss Patty trembling beside me.
But he didn't look over. He stood there resting, breathing hard, andswearing at the weather, while Mike waited, in surly silence, and thevon Inwald cursed in German.
After my heart had been beating in my ears for about three years the fathand moved, and I heard the rattle of glass again and Thoburn's groan ashe bent over his half of the load.
"'Come on, my partners in distress, My comrades through this wilderness,'"
he said, and the others grunted and started on.
When they had disappeared in the snow we got out of our cramped positionand prepared to scurry home. I climbed the fence and looked after them."Humph!" I said, "I guess that basket isn't for the hungry poor. I'dgive a good bit to know--" Then I turned and looked for Miss Patty. Shewas flat on the snow, crawling between the two lower rails of the fence.
"Have you no shame?" I demanded.
She looked up at me with her head and half her long sealskin coatthrough the fence.
"None," she said pitifully. "Minnie, I'm stuck perfectly tight!"
"You ought to be left as you are," I said, jerking at her, "for peopleto come"--jerk--"to-morrow to look at"--jerk. She came through at that,and we lay together in the snow and like to burst a rib laughing.
"You'll never be a princess, Miss Patty," I declared. "You're too lowlyminded."
She sat up suddenly and straightened her sealskin cap on her head.
"I wish," she said unpleasantly, "I wish you wouldn't always drag indisagreeable things, Minnie!"
And she was sulky all the way to the house.
Miss Summers came to my room that night as I was putting my hot-waterbottle to bed, in a baby-blue silk wrapper with a band of fur around thelow neck--Miss Summers, of course, not the hot-water bottle.
"Well!" she said, sitting down on the foot of the bed and staring at me."Well, young woman, for a person who has never been farther away thanFinleyville you do pretty well!"
"Do what?" I asked, with the covers up to my chin.
"Do what, Miss Innocence!" she said mockingly. "You're the onlyred-haired woman I ever saw who didn't look as sophisticated as thedevil. I'll tell you one thing, though." She reached down into thepocket of her dressing-gown and brought up a cigarette and a match. "Younever had me fooled for a minute!" She looked at me over the match.
I lay and stared back.
"And another thing," she said. "I never had any real intention ofmarrying Dicky Carter and raising a baby sanatorium. I wouldn't have theface to ask Arabella to live here."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Miss Summers," I said. "I've gone through alot; I'm an old woman in the last two weeks. My hair's falling from itshaving to stand up on end half the time."
She leaned over and put her cigarette on the back of my celluloidmirror, and then suddenly she threw back her head and laughed.
"Minnie!" she said, between fits, "Minnie! As long as I live I'll neverforget that wretched boy's face! And the sand boxes! And the blanketsover the windows! And the tarpaulin over the rafters! And Mr. VanAlstyne sitting on the lawnmower! I'd rather have had my minute in thatdoorway than fifty thousand dollars!"
"If you had had to carry out all those things--" I began, but shechecked me.
"Listen!" she said. "Somebody with brains has got to take you youngpeople in hand. You're not able to look after yourselves. I'm fond ofAlan Pierce, for one thing, and I don't care to see a sanatorium thatmight have been the child of my solicitude kidnaped and reared as asummer hotel by Papa Thoburn. A good fat man is very, very good, Minnie,but when he is bad he is horrid."
"It's too late," I objected feebly. "He can't get it now."
"Can't he!" She got up and yawned, stretching. "Well, I'll lay youten to one that if we don't get busy he'll have the house empty inthirty-six hours, and a bill of sale on it in as many days."
The celluloid mirror blazed up at that minute, and she poured thecontents of my water-pitcher over the dresser. For the next hour, whileI was emptying water out of the bureau drawers and hanging up my clothesto dry, she told me what she knew of Thoburn's scheme, and it turned mecold.
But I went to bed finally. Just as I was dozing off, somebody opened mydoor, and I heard a curious scraping along the floor. I turned on thelight, and there was Arabella, half-dragging and half-carrying a solidsilver hand-mirror with a card on it: "To Minnie, to replace the onethat blew up. J. S."