CHAPTER XXVI
A DIPLOMATIST
Luella Benslow had enjoyed her round of afternoon calls. She had paraded the importance of the guests she was "accommodating" and had swelled with satisfaction in the interest she had elicited.
In this complacent state of mind she was passing near Belinda Barry's cottage on the way home when she observed a strange object on the roof of the shed. The thing, whatever it was, moved, seeming to grow and shrink again before her eyes. Luella owned some spectacles, but they were worn only in private and reposed in these days in the kitchen drawer, from which they occasionally emerged stealthily when some exigency arose like the reading of a label on a spice box.
It was out of her way to go nearer to the cottage, but that mysterious manifestation on the roof of the shed was too great a temptation for flesh and blood to resist.
She changed her route and approached. In a minute the object, recognizing her, rose to its full height and faced her cautious advance.
"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Miss Benslow in a minute more. She stood still.
"Blanche Aurora Martin, what under the canopy are you doin' up there? Don't you know you'll defame them shingles?"
Blanche Aurora looked down on the newcomer, who was dressed in her very best. About her neck hung chains enough to excite the envy of the aborigines. On her head she wore a hat with an ostrich feather which stood up bravely, although its appearance suggested that a sea-bath had been one of its many trying experiences.
"I'll bet Belinda ain't to home," went on Miss Benslow accusingly, and the culprit stood at ease, her arms akimbo.
"I should think you was old enough by this time not to go caperin' around on roofs. What you up there for?"
"Lookin' for my gum," replied Blanche Aurora.
"You needed a spyglass for that, did you?"
Indeed, the accused was balancing a long slender glass on one hip.
"You know the store Miss Barry sets by that glass, and I'll bet she wouldn't let you touch it. Your folks must be all out, the way you're actin'. The idea o' stickin' your gum up on that roof. Get it and come down this minute. It's dretful bad for them shingles."
"Oh, I don't care 'bout my gum anyway. I don't chaw no more 'cause Miss Linda don't like to have me."
With surprising ease and carelessness the speaker dropped to a sitting posture, slid down the low shed roof and landed upright at Miss Benslow's feet.
The visitor started back. "My heart!" she exclaimed, clapping to her breast the hand not burdened with a blue parasol. "A wonder you didn't drop that glass, you naughty girl."
"Oh, dry up!" remarked Blanche Aurora nonchalantly.
"How dare you address me so! Don't you know your sister is in my employ?"
"What's that got to do with the high price o' putty?" inquired the other in a swaggering manner.
"Well!" ejaculated Miss Benslow wrathfully. "Your wonderful Miss Linda don't seem to have improved your manners as much as she has your attire. I hope Letty Martin knows there's nobody at my house that's goin' to rig her up in pink ribbons. We ain't such fools over there: though I guess the Lindsays could buy and sell Linda Barry since her c'lamities, and the gentlemen that I'm accawmodatin' – " Miss Benslow raised her scanty eyebrows impressively – "is simply made o' money! Good gracious," she added in a different tone, "here I am wastin' my time with you, and Mr. King left alone all this time. He might want somethin'!" She turned with an air of pressing business.
Blanche Aurora had pricked up her ears at the last remark.
"Alone?" she repeated, with sudden interest. "Has your folks all gone too?"
The spyglass from the roof had discerned a white gown on the Benslow piazza, but the disturbing question had been to whom it belonged. Mrs. Lindsay or her daughter might have been keeping the invalid company, while Miss Linda wandered away for a walk. The little girl's brain worked fast.
"Say, I'm sorry I was impident to you," she said, with conciliatory meekness.
"Well, you'd better be," snapped Luella, pausing to loosen a point of her parasol from the fringe of her cape.
"Say, you don't need to hurry right off, do you? I'm all alone."
Miss Benslow looked suspiciously at the speaker. It was too much to ask one to believe that saucy Blanche Aurora, with her tip-tilted nose and her bold eyes, was really penitent.
"Yes, I do," she retorted, unmollified. "If this pesky parasol will ever let go that fringe."
"Let me fix it," offered the meek one; and she did fix it so effectively that for almost five minutes more Miss Benslow stood there, fuming.
"Oh, pshaw, let it go!" she exclaimed at last, jerking away; and with the jerk the parasol freed itself.
"Oh, say, Luella – I mean Miss Benslow. I feel so kind o' lonely. You've got a fireless cooker, hain't you? I don't see why you have to hurry so."
"Of course I've got a fireless cooker, and a new blue-flame stove, and a receipt book better than any thing you ever saw."
"Well, I was only goin' to say wouldn't you like some violet perfume on your handkercher? I've got some perfectly ellergunt and you're a-carryin' such a pretty handkercher."
"That there handkercher," announced Miss Benslow proudly, "was brought me by a gentleman, the last time he was to Portland."
"Oh, I didn't know as Mr. King was strong enough to go to Portland," said Blanche Aurora humbly, touching the handkerchief admiringly.
"He ain't," declared the visitor, with a grand air. "'T warn't him. 'T was somebody quite different: somebody that calls me Luella." The visitor giggled. "He asked me if he might."
"I wonder," said Blanche Aurora with an awestruck air, "if it could 'a' ben that spullendid Mr. Whitcomb!"
"Well," returned the other, smiling and bridling, "that's jest who it is. He wants me to call him Fred, but I'm awful shy that way. I may some day, but I haven't yet. You needn't tell nobody, but Madge Lindsay is perfectly crazy over him. She tries to hide it, but she can't from me. I've got eyes and ears. She sings to him on the piazza these moonlight nights and plays on a thing that looks like a big potater-bug. She calls it a bandelin."
"I think you're real smart to get along with such a big family," said Blanche Aurora with the same admiring air.
"Well, I didn't know's I could, fust off; but you see, it was this way. Miss Lindsay she confided in me. Madge was gittin' strong and beginnin' to hanker to git away where things was gay, – the merry whirl, you know – "
Oh, yes; Blanche Aurora's nod, and her close, respectful attention showed that though young and inexperienced she did know.
– "So jest at that crucical time there come this appeal from Fred – I mean Mr. Whitcomb – in Chicago, and Mis' Lindsay says to me, she says, 'I b'lieve if my daughter had her cousin here to play with she'd settle down contented again. I don't want her to go away yet.' Cousin!" – contemptuously – "'T ain't any very near cousin, I guess; and I can tell you she does play with him – and to him – and at him. Oh" – with sudden recollection – "ain't I smart! I must go."
"Well, jest a minute, Miss Benslow. I'll bet it would please Mr. Whitcomb like everything to have that spullendid handkercher smellin' good. Jest come in my room a minute."
Once in the room Luella found her hostess so entertaining that she stayed another ten minutes, admiring the pretty things which closet and dresser revealed, and which under ordinary circumstances their owner would have guarded sedulously from these inquisitive eyes and loquacious lips. However, it was all for Miss Linda. Of course, Blanche Aurora couldn't be certain that her adored one wanted this extra latitude, but her absorption in Linda had made her preternaturally observing; besides, she remembered those sobs.
Her quick conclusion was that it were better to let Luella Benslow tell all over the neighborhood about her stockings and petticoats than to interrupt the interview which the spyglass had revealed.
"Why, it must be time for the folks to be gettin' home!" ejaculated Miss Benslow at last, with a return of panic. "I'll have to run every step o' the way."
Blanche Aurora gave a sweet smile of contentment and sought no further to detain her guest. She watched from the window, and laughed wickedly as the ostrich feather veered and swung in the half-lope, half-run of its conscience-smitten wearer.
Halfway across the field Miss Benslow met a white-clothed figure moving unhurriedly.
"Why, Miss Linda, I thought you was to Portland," she said, breathless from her race. At the same time a hope sprang within her. "Was you to my house?" she added.
"Yes."
"I'm real sorry we was all out, 'cause you ain't ben neighborly." Miss Benslow strove for easy elegance, but she was out of breath, and again that pesky parasol had caught in her fringe. "Did you see Mr. King?"
"Yes."
"I'd ought to ben home sooner to give him his tea, but I hadn't a time-piece with me."
"I gave him his tea."
"Oh, I'm so thankful! Now I can ketch my breath. You'll call again, won't you?"
The radiant young girl blessed Miss Benslow with a wonderful smile.
"Yes. I'll come again to-morrow," she answered graciously, and passed on her way.
Miss Benslow turned to look after the lithe, graceful figure crossing Elysian fields.
"It's the first time I ever got a square look at her," she soliloquized in surprise at her own impression. "She's a – a" – she hesitated for a simile for the perfect simplicity of the girl's appearance, and that enchanting smile. "I'd call her a sunlight beauty," she finished, and trudged on.
Blanche Aurora, watching the road at the back of the house for Captain Jerry's carriage, didn't see Linda until she had nearly reached the piazza. The child then ran to the front door and in her eagerness slammed the screen behind her and stood waiting.
As soon as she met her friend's eyes she began to flush. Yes, it had been worth while! It surely had been worth while! Her heart hammered.
The white figure came on out of the sunshine into the shadow where Blanche Aurora stood transfixed.
"You good little thing," said Linda slowly, and she put an arm around the small shoulders and stooping, kissed a burning cheek.
"Where's the bowl?" demanded Blanche Aurora, her emotion driving her to take refuge in the practical.
"Among Miss Benslow's sweet-pea vines," returned Linda, her dimple at its deepest. "He – we dropped it, and it broke."
"And that Bavarian cream?"
"I suppose the hens ate it up in no time," confessed the messenger.
"I won't trust you again," said Blanche Aurora, with shining eyes. "Mr. King must be starved."
"No, I fed him with tea and cakes. Please trust me again. Please send me back to-morrow."
The little girl and the big girl exchanged a long look; and during it the possibility dawned upon the elder that this infant had designed and carried out a plan!
She colored slowly, continuing to gaze into the shining eyes, but Blanche Aurora retired demurely with a word about supper, and alone in the kitchen executed a dance which threatened every stick of furniture in the place.
Linda was still standing there watching the violet sea, so different from its morning dazzle of blue, when Jerry Holt's carryall approached. His voice was loud and defensive.
"I telled Mis' Lindsay and Madge they could sqwut to the depot till I got back," he was saying.
"Why, Jerry," said Miss Barry. "I would have let you take them home first. I thought they decided to go in the street car and walk the half-mile."
"My rule's fust come, fust served," responded Captain Jerry inexorably. "I seen you git off the train fust."
"But they have an invalid over at their house," pursued Miss Barry.
"I know they hev. Thet Whitcomb feller seen a car comin' and he said he could make it quicker'n Molly could." The Captain's feelings had evidently been hurt in the most sensitive spot. "Says I, 'Go it then, young man;' and I made up my mind to haul you fust. Madge wanted to go with him, but her mother didn't want to sqwut alone, nor she didn't want to walk the half-mile neither, so Madge stayed."
"Why, we had room for Mrs. Lindsay," said Mrs. Porter.
"No" – the driver's response was firm. "Not with all them bags and bundles." He smiled a smile of satisfaction at the punishment he had meted out. "Now, I guess I'll go back and haul 'em," he added, as his passengers alighted. "They'll be tired o' sqwuttin'. They're dretful uneasy folks, anyway. What ye lookin' at, Linda?" he added, loud and cheerfully.
The girl turned toward him, and came to meet the arrivals. "My future," she answered.
He regarded her admiringly. He had never seen her like this.
"Seems to be a bright one," he remarked, grinning. "Ye'd better git some smoked glasses if ye're goin' to look at it long. Git ap, Molly."
With a grating of wheels the old carryall turned around and moved on its way.
"You bet the Cape agrees with them city folks," he soliloquized.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FULL MOON
"I declare that was too bad of Jerry," said Miss Barry. "He's usually so" – her voice died away because she became aware of Linda, standing before her, a sort of glorified presence. "Hey?" she finished sharply.
The girl had one of Mrs. Porter's hands and with the other arm she now softly embraced her bewildered aunt, then drew away far enough to look into the questioning eyes of first one and then the other.
"You've both had so much trouble with me," she said.
"Well?" returned Miss Barry crisply. "Is it over?"
The girl nodded.
"Linda," said Mrs. Porter, with excited urgency, "what has happened, dear?"
The girl continued to look at them for a moment of silence, as if loath to let her secret pass her lips.
"Bertram!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter.
Linda nodded.
Miss Barry gave her niece a shake. "Speak out," she said, cross in the mounting excitement of the moment. "Has he been over here?"
"No. I went there. Blanche Aurora sent me with a snack. The hens got the snack; but – we had tea."
"Oh, you darling!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter under the eloquent eyes and dimples. "You shall kiss her first, Miss Barry. Hurry up. I can't wait."
"I don't see any reason for kissing her," said Miss Barry, and her earrings quivered with what she was repressing. "Feeding dainties to the hens. The idea!"
"Oh, there is a reason, there is a reason, Aunt Belinda." Her namesake spoke softly, and taking her in her arms kissed her. "How good you've been to me!" she said tenderly.
Then Mrs. Porter had her turn, and the eyes of both women grew wet in their long embrace.
"Well, give me some place to sit down," said Miss Barry desperately. She looked around and found a piazza chair, into which she dropped. "In all my born days I never saw such a girl. She's either got to hang a man to a sour apple tree, or else she's got to marry him!"
Over at the homestead Bertram King was winning golden laurels from his self-appointed caretaker.
At the supper table his novel vivacity and good appetite gave him the appearance of complete recovery.
"See here," remarked Whitcomb, "solitary confinement is evidently all you've been needing. We'll clear out soon again. Even you went away, didn't you, Luella?" The speaker turned to Miss Benslow, whom on his return he had discovered scrambling about to get supper in her robes of state. She was now waiting on table and blessing Jerry Holt for his dilatoriness in bringing the Lindsays home.
"I did step out for a spell," she returned in her best manner; "but I guess I warn't missed," she added coyly. "Miss Linda Barry gave Mr. King his tea."
"Really!" drawled Madge Lindsay. "How cleverly she chose the right moment for her first call."
"There are cats in the room," announced Whitcomb, helping himself to honey.
Madge lifted her eyebrows and made a defiant grimace.
"I met her as she was a-comin' back," said Luella. "I guess she felt dretful bad not findin' me home, 'cause she said she'd call again to-morrer."
This remark coming under the head of what Madge called "juices," she glanced at Whitcomb for sympathy, but he was preoccupied. He was looking curiously at King's debonair countenance.
"It's jest as well I warn't in, I think," continued Miss Benslow, casting Whitcomb her most kittenish glance. "Mr. King's tay-a-tay seems to 'a' done him a world o' good."
The object of her remark caught his friend's eye and laughed frankly. Whitcomb reflected the laugh with a smile, but his curious interest precluded much notice of Luella's sallies. He regarded King's good cheer and increased color questioningly. Evidently Linda had used tact and succeeded in making her peace, and the talk had relieved King as well as herself. He wondered whether his friend would tell him of the interview or leave it to his imagination.
"To-morrow, tennis!" cried Madge triumphantly; "and don't we deserve it, Freddy?"
"We do, we do," he replied, returning with gusto to the hot biscuit and honey and lobster salad.
When the meal was finished, Whitcomb pantomimed throwing a ball at Madge and raised questioning eyebrows.
"All right," she said, rising with alacrity.
"Oh, you crazy children," protested Mrs. Lindsay, "are you going to play ball? Can't you be satisfied to be still a minute? Freddy, you'll take all her nice new ten pounds off her."
But the young people only laughed. Though Madge Lindsay might drawl, she could throw a ball like a boy, and in default of King, Whitcomb, whose muscles were always crying out to be used, was glad to accept her.
Mrs. Lindsay went to the kitchen with Luella to bestow the provisions she had purchased, and King strolled out on the piazza and watched his friend and Madge.
The girl was still in her smart tailor gown. From previous observation of her tactics he believed that when the game was over she would change her dress before starting in on her evening; and he watched for that psychological moment when she should disappear.
The moon was full to-night, and with the marvelous obligingness of Maine weather the wind had gone down with the sun, making the out-of-doors even more attractive by night than by day. As the twilight deepened, the great planet changed from silver to gold.
When at last the ball players took off their leather gloves, Madge spoke wistfully.
"I wish we could go out on that moon path! Think of this heavenly night and no boat except that old smelly tub of Mr. Benslow's! When we come again, Freddy – "
She stopped, and he smiled down at her brilliant dark face, rosy with exercise and brown from the sun.
"Yes, next time sure," he said. "You see I didn't want to do anything about a boat so long as King couldn't go out."
"You're the best friend I ever knew," declared the girl. "Wait till I get on another frock. We'll drag him with us over to the rock. The Loreleis will be singing to-night, I am sure."
"One will, I hope," returned Whitcomb. She skipped before him. "You've never seen me dance," she said. "Before the moon goes I must dance for you on the grass. I have a costume here and my castanets."
"You'd be a wonderful Carmen," returned Whitcomb, regarding her lithe dipping and swinging, admiringly.
"Oh, mar-velous!" she rejoined. "So long," and taking the rickety piazza steps two at a time she disappeared into the house.
King immediately buttonholed his friend. "Come over to the tent, will you?" he said.
"Sure thing," returned Whitcomb, flinging an arm around the other's shoulders.
They crossed the grass and entering the tent sat down on camp-stools in the opening, where the increasing mystery and magic of the night was spread before them.
"I can see that you and Linda have fixed it up," said Whitcomb. "She has worried her head off for fear the old friendship would never be renewed. She thinks an awful lot of you, old man."
At the beginning of this speech King looked up eagerly. Could it be that his task was going to be so easy?
But as Whitcomb continued, his look veered away, back to the moon path.
"Yes, we fixed it up," he replied.
There was a space of silence during which he tried to decide how to go on.
"You've been frank with me, Freddy, at various times regarding Linda, and I've been rather surprised lately to notice that you're not very assiduous in your attentions over there."
Whitcomb's eyes also sought the moon path and a perplexed line came in his forehead.
"No," he admitted. "Something has happened to Linda. She's different. I can't say that she ever let me come very near to her, but now – since she left Chicago, she has grown away from me; far away. She seems to have a lot of new ideas that I can't follow. I don't seem to get on with her."
"And you do get on with Madge Lindsay?" suggested King.
"Isn't she a peach?" ejaculated Whitcomb, turning to his companion a suddenly bright face. "Why, it's like owning a whole vaudeville company to be with her. Little slender thing that looks as if you could snap her in two between your thumb and finger; but game! Gee, but she's game!"
"She is game," agreed King, the vapor-cloud which had obscured a trifle the full sun of his happiness melting away.
"Of course, a man doesn't connect sentiment with that sort of girl," went on Whitcomb, "but she's a comrade: just as good as a chap, you know."
"I understand perfectly," returned King, "but sometimes these delightful chaps in petticoats have very feminine hearts; and you don't want to break them in two between thumb and finger."
"Oh, rot," returned Whitcomb, trying not to look pleased. "There she is," he continued, starting up from his camp-stool as a figure in a pale wrap of some sort came out on the piazza. "That's another thing about Madge. She can change her clothes in a jiffy."
"Hold on a bit, will you?" said King quietly.
"Sure. Long as you like. Madge and I thought perhaps you'd come over to the rock with us and listen to the Loreleis."
"I haven't quite finished telling you, Freddy. You know I said something to you about the past being dead and all that."
"Yes."
"Well – I was mistaken. Linda and I – "
Whitcomb turned like a flash and dropped back on the camp-stool.
"What?"
"We fixed it up this afternoon for all time."
"What!"
"Yes. It's a trite thing for a fellow to call himself the happiest man on earth, but Linda has given me back everything I had lost. I am as much a new man as if I had been created to-day."
The quiet words thrilled through Whitcomb. He tried to answer and gulped. Tried again, and shook his friend's responsive hand.
"You deserve it," was all he could manage to utter.
"I want to go over there to-night, Freddy."
"You can't walk that far."
"Try me. I've never seen Miss Barry's cottage, and I – well, I can't stay away."
"We'll walk over with you, then," said Whitcomb gravely. He walked toward Madge and called her, and she came springing across the grass.
"Ho for the rock?" she cried gayly.
"No. King wants to go to Miss Barry's. He thinks he's up to it. We'll walk over with him."
The three moved away across the enchanted field. The night was hushed. Even the tide whispered. Not yet sounded the crescendo which would culminate at midnight in a crashing, magnificent choral.
Madge scented something novel in the mental atmosphere. Her companions were grateful for her easy chatter.
When they neared the shingled cottage she protested tentatively.
"Oh, do we have to go into the house on such a glorious night?"
"You and I are not going in," answered Whitcomb quietly.
They stood a moment near the piazza steps.
"Good-night, King." The two men shook hands. "I think that is Linda now over there in the hammock. Give my love to her, will you?"
"I will."
Above the dazzle of golden water and under the pulsing beat of the stars, King moved up the steps.
There was a stir in the shadow at the end of the piazza and in a moment one word sounded on the still air.
"Bertram!"
The voice and its tone wrenched some deeply rooted fiber in Whitcomb's being and all his blood seemed trying to rush at once to his heart.
Madge, too, heard the revealing joy of the single word. As they turned to walk back, her clinging silken draperies stirred, and she slipped her hand through her companion's arm, and clasped it.
"It's a vast sea," she said softly.