CHAPTER XIV
BLANCHE AURORA
When Linda waked next morning, she had been dreamless for nine hours; sunk so deep in slumber after weeks of restless, fitful naps that the return to earth was a slow, scarcely credible process. A soothing, rhythmic sweep of sound seemed saying, "Sleep on, Sleep on"; but a song sparrow perched on the corner of the sloping roof above her window was loudly declaring that it was ecstasy to waken. The rapturous burst, often repeated, won her slow attention. The sun shone through the rosy curtains and a breeze fanned her opening eyes. She turned her face into her pillow. Her first thought as ever of her father, she seemed to commune with him.
"I'm here in your room, dear. I dare think about you. The insults are going to cease, dearest, dearest!"
Her rested brain recalled those sentences in one of Mrs. Porter's letters, prophetic words of what the public verdict would be when truth began to appear. Then had come King's reassurance. She knew each phrase of both letters by heart.
Mrs. Porter had put Miss Barry's best photograph of her brother on the dresser in this room. Turning, Linda again opened her eyes and they rested upon it. For a moment she gazed, then rose with a sense of refreshment. How quiet the house was! She took her bath and dressed, still without hearing a human movement, and at last went downstairs to the empty living-room. The old-fashioned clock above the fireplace pointed to nine forty-five.
"I surely am a petted child!" thought Linda. She moved through the dining-room and was going to the kitchen when the swing door suddenly opened, nearly striking her, and a girl of thirteen years appeared. By dint of peeking around the corner of the house, Blanche Aurora had obtained a glimpse of the tall slender figure in black when aunt and niece arrived yesterday; and of the two, Linda was the more surprised at the sudden encounter now.
In any case, Blanche Aurora was not easily daunted. She had spent years in twitching smaller brothers and sisters into the path of duty. Perhaps the necessity of her being "careful about many things," notwithstanding her youth, had drawn Miss Belinda to her in sympathetic remembrance of her own childhood; but if that was the case, it had resulted in no tenderness given or received. Theirs was a relation of armed neutrality in which neither ever got much the better of the other.
Blanche Aurora's eyes were round, expressionless, and light blue. Each of the two pigtails of her red hair had a string braided in with it to discourage relaxation, and this cord was twisted around their ends with a determined hand, the whole so tightly reined that each braid turned up at the end like a fishhook.
A dozen times this morning she had pushed open the swing door under the impression that she heard the guest descend: the wonderful guest, who never had to touch foot to the ground, but rolled around in carriages and ate off gold plates. Blanche Aurora had vaguely expected something so overwhelming in the appearance of the millionaire's daughter that the apparition of Linda in a plain white gown, not glittering at any point, was somewhat disappointing. The flat-chested little maid viewed the tall girl's shining, waving hair and her large, grave eyes for a moment; then she spoke: —
"Pretty near hit you, didn't I?" she said airily.
"My aunt – " murmured Linda.
"They've gone to see the chickens, and I'm to give you your breakfast. There's your place."
Blanche Aurora's businesslike, no-time-to-spare finger pointed to the white table which bore a dish of fruit and a single goldbanded plate with its complement of silver and napkin.
Linda sat down meekly.
"I s'pose you'll want a finger-bowl," said Blanche Aurora.
"If – if it's convenient," replied Linda.
The other actually smiled. "Ho! We've got lots of 'em," she returned, and stalked to the sideboard, where she poured water into a bowl and placed it close by Linda's elbow.
While the guest opened an orange, the light-blue eyes watched her white ringless hands. "She don't look a bit rich," thought Blanche Aurora, "but I'll bet she's stuck-up."
She withdrew against the wall, from whence Linda felt her unwinking, round stare.
"Are you my aunt's little maid?" asked the girl, after the silence began to be embarrassing.
"No," came the prompt reply, "I'm her help." All Blanche Aurora's remarks were made in a loud tone as if she were talking against the sound of the sea. "I come after I git the children to school."
"Children?"
"My brothers and sisters."
Linda glanced up at the short, slight form clad in a faded gingham dress that was outgrown.
"Don't you go to school yourself?"
"Ho! No! I got through last year; I'm thirteen."
A pause, during which the help reluctantly admired Linda's hands and her deft manner of manipulating spoon and orange. As the guest laid down the empty rind, her companion's voice rent the air.
"Oatmeal, wheatena, and all the cold cereals!" she vociferated.
Linda started. "I – I don't really care – "
"One's jest as easy as the other. They're all handy."
"I'll take the – oatmeal, please," replied Linda under the pressure of that strenuous reassurance.
During the brief absence of the small maid, the girl leaned back in her chair, and looked through the open windows fronting the sea.
Presently, Blanche Aurora's foot kicked open the swing door and she advanced with the cereal and noted that the guest shivered.
"Be ye cold?" she questioned sharply; "I can shet the winders."
"Yes, I wish you would. This is like eating on a boat."
"I hate bo'ts," vouchsafed the help, and crossing to the windows slammed them down, after which she resumed her position against the wall while Linda served herself with oatmeal.
"There's coffee and rolls and eggs," shouted Blanche Aurora after half a minute of dead silence during which the clock ticked.
Linda jumped again. The help was so very responsible and so clean and wiry that she smiled as she lifted her eyes.
"I've got an hourglass and you're to tell me when you want 'em put on."
"What?"
"The eggs; they're good and fresh. Luella Benslow's hens laid 'em."
"Are those the hens Aunt Belinda has gone to see?"
"Yes; Mis' Porter wanted to see the hens that have hot-water bags."
Linda kept on smiling.
"Dear me!" she said. "What is your name, please?"
"Blanche Aurora Martin," came the prompt report; "but you don't have to say the Martin. It's Blanche Aurora for short."
"I see; and I am Miss Barry."
"Yes, I know," was the prompt reply; "but I made up my mind to call you Miss Belinda 'cause if there was two Miss Barrys, I couldn't stand it."
"Really? Very well; but what did you mean about hens with hot-water bags?"
"Why, Luella puts 'em in every nest when it comes cold, and Mis' Porter, she laughed and laughed when she heard about it; Luella's some slack about lots o' things, but she's got real good ideas about helpin' the hens along and Mis' Porter wanted Miss Barry should take her over and see 'em." Blanche Aurora's sharp gaze noted the guest's languid appetite as evinced by the slight diminution of the oatmeal. "The eggs is real good," she continued, "and I've got an hourglass."
Linda lifted her somber eyes and showed the tips of her white teeth again.
"I hope you don't boil them an hour, Blanche Aurora?"
It wasn't very often that Miss Barry's maid was offered a joke, but the relaxing of her thin cheeks now showed that she could take one.
"No danger!" she returned smartly. But the suggestion of eggs, even those laid luxuriously in the proximity of a hot-water bag, could not tempt the pale guest this morning.
"Coffee and toast sound very good," she said. "No eggs this morning, I think."
"Hev it your own way," returned the help; "we cal'late to give you what you want," and at once she attacked the swing door. The little creature's sudden energy of motion after absolute repose was like her stentorian tones breaking dead silence.
When coffee and toast were set before the guest, Blanche Aurora again supported the wall and watched her charge with an unremitting stare.
"You don't need to wait," said Linda.
"I druther," returned Blanche Aurora with a finality which admitted of no argument.
The guest followed the line of least resistance.
"Is Mrs. – is the hen lady one of your neighbors?"
"Luella Benslow? Yes, she and her father. Her father's a wonderful man – Luella's father is."
"What does he do?"
"Well, he don't do nothin' much. He never did support his family nor anythin' like that; but he has such wonderful 'complishments. There ain't nobody can ketch a frog like Cy Benslow can."
Linda looked up and felt color coming into her cheeks in the novel desire to laugh.
"How does he do it?"
"Like this." The round light eyes gained a spark of interest as Blanche Aurora began describing large circles in the air with her right hand, and advancing toward the table with a stealthy tread. As she approached, the circles contracted gradually, until close to the guest they had narrowed to a small ring out of which the hand made a jab toward the victim's face, and Linda jerked her head back.
Blanche Aurora smiled in triumph and returned to her place.
"I – I really thought you had my nose!"
"That's jest it. Ye see the frog's got to look so many directions, he don't know which way to jump, so he's jest kind o' par'lyzed and gits ketched."
"Very ingenious," laughed Linda.
Yes, she laughed. Blanche Aurora, unconscious that she had performed a feat eclipsing Cy Benslow's, warmed to her theme.
"And you jest ought to see him git worms for bait."
"Now, Blanche Aurora, it was bad enough to be a frog. I positively decline to be a worm."
"You don't have to be. I'll jest tell ye about it. He goes up to a post, Cy does." The speaker moved forward, and Linda put out a warning hand.
"Nor a post either, Blanche Aurora. I firmly decline to be a post."
"And he takes a board and scrapes it back and forrard across the post; it grits somethin' awful, and the shakin' gets to the worms somehow and they begin comin' up out o' the ground to see what's goin' on, and" – Blanche Aurora nodded significantly – "and that's the last they do see, I can tell ye. They go whack into Cy's pail and ketch his dinner for him."
"What a wizard!"
"No, he don't get no lizards, and I'm glad we don't have 'em. There was a lady once boardin' to Benslows' and she had one with a chain to its leg and she let it run all over her. Bah!" the speaker shuddered. "I'd hate to feel their scrabbly feet, wouldn't you?"
"I've finished, Blanche Aurora," said Linda hastily. She pushed her chair back from the table. There was pressure in her throat and in her eyes. She rose abruptly.
"Say! you forgot your finger-bowl," shouted her waitress after the figure swiftly retreating toward the piazza.
CHAPTER XV
THE HARBOR
Blanche Aurora's prey could not so easily escape her. She had been left in charge of Linda and she followed her now to the porch: that exciting porch surmounting a castle wall of rock, with soft niches of green where Nature's mother-hand found vulnerable spots to plant her lovely ferns and flowers.
To Blanche Aurora the situation of the cottage was objectionably noisy and windy, and she often wished her employer's house could be moved back on the road where one could see the passing. She scowled now against the dazzling sun and boisterous wind.
"Be you goin' to set out here?" she roared at Linda.
"How beautiful it is!" escaped involuntarily from the guest.
"Then I'll git you some warm things. You're sick and delicate!" yelled Blanche Aurora as one whom the roar of old Ocean could not down.
Linda looked at the slim child in the faded gingham. The salt air went through her piercingly.
"I'm not delicate at all!" she protested, but little cared her mentor for her defense.
She straightway brought a steamer-rug, shawl and pillows from a near-by closet.
"There!" she said, depositing them in the hammock on the glassed-in end of the porch. She gave her queer little grimace of a smile and again her thin cheeks wrinkled. "Miss Barry said you looked like a hothouse plant, so I guess you'd better stay under glass for a spell."
"Aren't you cold yourself in that cal – that thin dress?" asked Linda.
"I dunno. I don't believe so."
Linda's eyes grew softer. It was so evident that the little caretaker had small leisure to think of her sensations.
"Lay down and I'll cover you," commanded Blanche Aurora.
"Lie down? No, indeed. I'm just up."
The help paused with the rug in her thin arms. She was undecided as to whether to humor this rebellion.
"Blanche Aurora, do you like candy?"
The slender face lost its worried expression and grew younger.
"There ain't much sense to that question," she returned.
"Then come into the house with me," said Linda.
The wraps were dropped in the hammock and willing feet followed the guest.
From a cabinet in the corner of the room Linda chose the reddest of red boxes, generous in size, and placed it in a pair of eager hands.
Blanche Aurora viewed the prize, amazed. "I ain't ever in my life had all the candy I wanted," she said in such awed tones that Linda smiled and reached for a violet box which she piled upon the other.
"Oh!" gasped the recipient. She looked up at the pale guest with a new realization of what it meant to be a millionaire's daughter. Gold plates and carriages sounded fine, but it was only like hearing about Cinderella and other impossible maidens. Here were tangible chocolates given away recklessly and with nonchalance. What a consciousness that bespoke!
As they stood there, Linda, watching her erstwhile mentor endure an ecstatic paralysis, Miss Barry and Mrs. Porter entered.
"What are you doing, Linda Barry!" exclaimed her aunt. "I'll keep those boxes myself and give the child a few at a time. She'll make herself sick." She hurried forward, but Linda pressed her back.
"Let her make herself sick," she pleaded. "I'll take care of her."
Miss Barry looked from one to the other undecidedly. She recognized this surprisingly good symptom in her niece, but such a wholesale relaxation of discipline toward the most willful, stubborn child on the Cape was unheard of.
While she hesitated, Linda stepped to one side and made room for the "help" to pass, which Blanche Aurora made haste to do, the wonderful boxes clutched in her arms, and the fishhook braids vibrating with the double excitement of her gift and getting the better of her employer.
Mrs. Porter watched Linda thoughtfully. When she and Miss Barry a few minutes ago had left Luella Benslow and her pampered hens, and their hilarious mood had quieted, the younger woman had at once brought up the subject of Bertram King, whose situation dwelt much in her mind. As they walked across the soft grass she took Miss Barry's arm.
"Tell me about my cousin, Mr. King. How does he look?"
"Like the last run o' shad," returned Miss Barry promptly.
"I never met a belated shad."
"Well, you've eaten 'em, haven't you? I'd just as soon eat a fried paper of pins."
"You mean that Bertram is thin?"
"Just so. He looks as if he'd been through the war, and so he has."
"I feel as if I ought to go back to him."
"Law! Don't leave me yet!" exclaimed Miss Barry in a panic. "You're the only person Linda can stand the sight of. Oh! if I'm not glad to get home!" The speaker inflated her lungs and stepped lightly.
"You say she blames Bertram for her father's misfortunes."
"Yes; and I guess she ain't the only one, from what Harriet says. Lots o' folks think my brother pinned his faith to Mr. King's judgment in taking on a new proposition."
"Yes," returned Mrs. Porter thoughtfully. "I've heard it said."
Miss Barry glanced around at her companion quickly. "Well, I hope you didn't take any stock in it," she returned sharply. "Lambert Barry had a backbone of his own. I'm surprised at his own daughter's not knowing him well enough to scout such a notion."
"Bertram is very clever. He had been with him a long time."
"Clever! I guess he is clever. I could just about worship that man for all he's done," was the warm rejoinder; "and if that cock-and-bull story was true about Bertram King dragging the bank into that Antlers thing that broke the camel's back, he's made up for it with pretty near his life's blood, working night and day to undo the damage."
Mrs. Porter's eyes glowed with interest and surprise at such heat from the reserved New England woman.
"You do feel that way! I'm so glad. Then, why doesn't Linda?"
"Because if Mr. King laid down and died it couldn't bring back her father," returned Miss Barry slowly.
Mrs. Porter looked away and shook her head. "How dreadful it seems," she said in a low tone. "Then you have no blame for Bertram?"
"Not a particle."
"What is the situation now? What has he been able to do?"
"Wonders," returned Miss Barry sententiously. "He sent me a letter to the train. I ought to have given it to you as soon as I touched home. I ought to have realized that you were so close to Mr. King that it would mean a lot to you as well as to us. You'll never see the Linda that was before that letter came. It gave her new life."
"Then didn't it make her feel kindly toward Bertram?" asked Mrs. Porter.
"No. She just accepted it as penance and the best restitution the poor fellow could make for a tragic and unpardonable – mind you, unpardonable mistake."
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," murmured Mrs. Porter.
"I know it," returned Miss Barry; "and you'll see when you read that letter that he has some forgiveness to do himself. He never mentioned Linda in it, and good enough for her. She had flouted him and refused to see him for days before he rightly sensed how deep her feeling was against him. It was at a business meeting we had that she came out flat with her suspicion and meanness. Oh, it was perfectly awful. I just have to remember and remember how much provocation she would have had if all she believed was true. That poor boy nearly fainted away in his tracks, the way she spoke to him."
Mrs. Porter bit her lip. She could picture the scene and her eyes filled.
"He loved her so!" she said softly.
"Yes, and there's that Fred Whitcomb, too: as nice a boy as ever lived. He just adores Linda; and it seems there's lots of others. I didn't believe before that I could ever get sick of arranging flowers; but really they were a pest. Linda wouldn't look at one, and I got so I passed them over to the waitress. She fixed them perfectly awful, too. They looked like crazy quilts when she got through – such colors together! Linda was a buxom, healthy girl, and good-looking enough, but for the life of me I can't see why she's such a snare."
"Poor child. She shows how she has suffered, but why didn't it soften her? How could she inflict suffering at such a time? I can hardly wait to see that letter," added Mrs. Porter, unconsciously hurrying her steps.
"I haven't got it. I gave it to Linda for her comfort, and hoping, too, that she'd get some punishment out of Mr. King's ignoring her. Never mentioned her name, you know."
"And didn't she feel it at all?"
"Not a mite."
"Then I suppose, after all, she never did care anything for Bertram," mused Mrs. Porter. "It was as well, perhaps, for him that she shocked him out of his dream. As well for him – not for her, poor child, it wasn't well for her to be cruel."
"I don't want to be too hard on her," said Miss Barry. "Maybe she wasn't really responsible. Land! What we went through! Well," she added, briskness coming into her voice, "that chapter's closed."
"Let me," said Mrs. Porter, "let me be the one to ask Linda for the letter. You have been so tried, Miss Barry. I don't want to ask you to reopen the sorrowful chapter; but I long to see what Bertram has to say. I have always thought him an extraordinary young fellow and respected him as much as I loved him."
"Just so. Just so," responded Miss Barry warmly. "All right. You ask for the letter. I pass my niece over to you now."
They had reached the porch of the shingled cottage and in another minute they walked in upon Linda's presentation scene.
Miss Barry was quite prompt in following her maid into the kitchen, but the minute's delay in hanging up her hat and coat was sufficient for all sign of the candy boxes to have disappeared. When she opened the door Blanche Aurora was at the sink letting floods of hot water into the dishpan and singing with vigor, "A charge to keep I have," meanwhile rattling pans and china, the whole giving an amazing effect of clatter.
Miss Barry involuntarily clapped her hands to her ears.
"You needn't sing," she remarked loudly.
"All right," returned the help, ceasing, "but you told me 'twas good for my lungs."
"That's all very well when you're alone, Blanche Aurora; but I'm going to be busy out here seeing what shape you've got the closets into while I've been gone and how many dishes I've got left. To-morrow I'm going to begin putting up strawberries."
Miss Barry was in the habit of preparing in the summer time of peace for the war of winter, when boarding-houses could not supply her with home-prepared fruit.
Meanwhile, in the living-room the light of amusement had died from Linda's pale face and she sank into a chintz-cushioned wicker rocker. Mrs. Porter took a neighboring chair.
"You had a good sleep, I hope, Linda."
"Wonderful. I went completely out of the world for the first time in – I don't know how many weeks." The girl met the kind regard fixed upon her. "I can't get used," she added, "to seeing you far away from your busy life. It seems as if I must hurry to say what I wish because in half an hour I shall be turned out by another pupil."
"Vacation is astonishingly pleasant when you've earned it," replied her friend. "I fancy that a lot of people who thought it would be great fun to retire from business soon made the discovery that when one stops working he stops playing too, because vacation has lost its zest. Familiarity breeds contempt in lots of ways."
Linda's large eyes rested upon the speaker, who had retained an orange silk sweater over her white waist and white corduroy skirt. The hero-worship that for two years she had laid at the feet of this woman was among the enthusiasms of that vital past, now gone forever. Once it would have meant wild elation to claim unlimited companionship with the adored one in this isolated, romantic spot. To-day, as she gazed at the wholesome, calm face of her teacher, it was that other teaching she had received from her, those words of balm that had proved the first comfort in her affliction, which gave her friend value.
"I owe you so much, Mrs. Porter," she said suddenly, after a mutual silence, full to each of them.
"I'm glad," returned the other as simply. "My heart cried out to help you, Linda."
The speaker knew that if the hurt, groping soul can find something for which to feel gratitude, healing has begun.
She came no nearer to the girl nor took her hand. It was a new Linda, cold, white, and undemonstrative except for her cruelty to Bertram King. Mrs. Porter steadied her own thought as it fled to him, and tried to think only of the needy one before her.
"You believed in my father – believed in him from the first. Bertram says now that he will be vindicated to all before very long; but I shall never forget those who believed in him from the first."
Mrs. Porter listened quietly to the low, vibrating voice. She saw the girl swallow and exercise self-control.
"Miss Barry tells me that my cousin wrote a letter to her, telling of hopeful conditions. She says that you have it. May I see it?"
"Yes. You deserve to see it. It is in my envelope of treasures: your letters." Linda's heart spoke through her eyes, then she arose.
"Let us go out of doors and read it," said Mrs. Porter. "We waste time in the house on such a day. Bring a warm wrap when you come down."
Linda went upstairs slowly. Her friend's eyes followed her inelastic, slow movements. Could this be Linda Barry!
She returned wearing a white sweater and Mrs. Porter pinned a white corduroy hat on the dark head and flung a polo coat over her own arm. She also took a cushion from the hammock as they passed.
"We won't sit on the piazza this morning," she said. "I have a surprise for you."
Leading the way around the corner of the house, the two walked away from the blue breakers, across a wide, grassy field.
"Your father did a fine thing in buying so much ground for his sister," said Mrs. Porter. "She says when he built the house he was afraid she would be lonely and he planned to build other attractive cottages through here, but she told him she didn't want any one near enough to shoot. She says he laughed and gave her the deed to all this land and told her to go ahead and suit herself. Do you see that mowing machine at work? That is Cap'n Jerry, who brought your trunk. See him mounted on his little throne and driving Molly – that wonderful horse that he says 'ain't afraid o' no nameable thing.' He is opposed on principle to doing anything 'sudden,' so he has taken his time to get at the mowing; but how sweet it will smell here to-morrow! Passengers will have to get over from the train the best way they can to-day. Cap'n Jerry says, very reasonably, that he can't be 'in two places to once,' and he's just a little bit afraid of your Aunt Belinda. He won't put off her work too long."
Linda's grave lips were parted as she looked across the field toward the machine where Captain Jerry was cheering Molly on and calming her disgust when the clipping knife encountered a stone, balking her efforts.
"He is the one who went to school with my father?"
"They all did. You'll meet others." They crossed the field, then Mrs. Porter turned inland. "Now, down this path, Linda. See, it is a path. I made it myself. Partly by constant use, partly with a sickle. I wish Miss Barry would sell me this spot. I don't believe she could shoot as far as this, do you? And – what do you think of it?"
Mrs. Porter paused and regarded her companion in triumph. She had led her around a clump of white birches, the advance guard of a forest of pine and balsam which held back the prevailing south wind. The zephyrs, forcing their way through, here and there, brought delicious odors of the firs. The ocean was sufficiently distant for its roar to be muffled, and an enchanting spring bubbled up in a natural rock pool, falling like liquid crystal over the granite barrier, and meandering away toward the steep bluff where it fell in a narrow rivulet down to the sea. The brooklet had worn a rut for itself and was bordered by greener grass and larger flowers than dotted the surrounding field. It made a gurgling sound, dear to its discoverer, and one of the gray, slanting rocks of a New England pasture rose in the bower of the birches, rising to a sufficient height to serve as a comfortable back for two people sitting side by side on the green couch, secure from the wind.
"See what a proof of my affection," said Mrs. Porter, "that I bring you here. I sneak away – I steal away! Not even Blanche Aurora knows where I am when I come here."
"I should incline to doubt that," returned Linda.
Mrs. Porter laughed. "Those round eyes do see about all that's going on, I admit; but I like to believe in my own cleverness sufficiently to feel that I have guarded this."
The speaker proceeded to spread the polo coat in front of the rock. "Sit down," she said, and when Linda obeyed she fitted the pillow in behind her back.
"No, indeed," protested Linda. "Blanche Aurora cried aloud that I was sick and delicate, but it's nothing of the kind. You must take the pillow yourself."
"Oh, to please me," urged Mrs. Porter. "I never bring a pillow. This sun-warmed rock just fits my back. We haven't tried it on yours yet, and I wanted your first experience to be positively sybaritic."
"My first," returned Linda; "then you do intend to let me come again?"
"Indeed, I do," was the cheery reply. "I don't know a better object lesson in the fact that nothing is too good to be true."