Memory, that drowsy custodian, had
wakened slowly, during this hour, beginning the process
with fitful gleams of semi-consciousness, then, irritated,
searching its pockets for the keys and dazedly exploring
blind passages; but now it flung wide open the gallery
doors, and there, in clear light, were the rows of
painted canvasses.
He remembered “that day”
when he was waiting for a car, and Laura Madison had
stopped for a moment, and then had gone on, saying
she preferred to walk. He remembered that after
he got into the car he wondered why he had not walked
home with her; had thought himself “slow”
for not thinking of it in time to do it. There
had seemed something very “taking” about
her, as she stopped and spoke to him, something enlivening
and wholesome and sweet it had struck him
that Laura was a “very nice girl.”
He had never before noticed how really charming she
could look; in fact he had never thought much about
either of the Madison sisters, who had become “young
ladies” during his mourning for his brother.
And this pleasant image of Laura remained with him
for several days, until he decided that it might be
a delightful thing to spend an evening with her.
He had called, and he remembered, now, Cora’s
saying to him that he looked at her sometimes as if
he did not like her; he had been surprised and astonishingly
pleased to detect a mysterious feeling in her about
it.
He remembered that almost at once
he had fallen in love with Cora: she captivated
him, enraptured him, as she still did as
she always would, he felt, no matter how she treated
him or what she did to him. He did not analyze
the process of the captivation and enrapturement for
love is a mystery and cannot be analyzed. This
is so well known that even Richard Lindley knew it,
and did not try!
. . . Heartsick, he stared at
the fallen book. He was a man, and here was the
proffered love of a woman he did not want. There
was a pathos in the ledger; it seemed to grovel, sprawling
and dishevelled in the circle of lamp-light on the
floor: it was as if Laura herself lay pleading
at his feet, and he looked down upon her, compassionate
but revolted. He realized with astonishment from
what a height she had fallen, how greatly he had respected
her, how warmly liked her. What she now destroyed
had been more important than he had guessed.
Simple masculine indignation rose
within him: she was to have been his sister.
If she had been unable to stifle this misplaced love
of hers, could she not at least have kept it to herself?
Laura, the self-respecting! No; she offered it offered
it to her sister’s betrothed. She had written
that he should “never, never know it”;
that when she was “cured” she would burn
the ledger. She had not burned it! There
were inconsistencies in plenty in the pitiful screed,
but these were the wildest and the cheapest.
In talk, she had urged him to “keep trying,”
for Cora, and now the sick-minded creature sent him
this record. She wanted him to know. Then
what else was it but a plea? “I love you.
Let Cora go. Take me.”
He began to walk up and down, wondering
what was to be done. After a time, he picked
up the book gingerly, set it upon a shelf in a dark
corner, and went for a walk outdoors. The night
air seemed better than that of the room that held
the ledger.
At the corner a boy, running, passed
him. It was Hedrick Madison, but Hedrick did
not recognize Richard, nor was his mind at that moment
concerned with Richard’s affairs; he was on an
errand of haste to Doctor Sloane. Mr. Madison
had wakened from a heavy slumber unable to speak,
his condition obviously much worse.
Hedrick returned in the doctor’s
car, and then hung uneasily about the door of the
sick-room until Laura came out and told him to go
to bed. In the morning, his mother did not appear
at the breakfast table, Cora was serious and quiet,
and Laura said that he need not go to school that
day, though she added that the doctor thought their
father would get “better.” She looked
wan and hollow-eyed: she had not been to bed,
but declared that she would rest after breakfast.
Evidently she had not missed her ledger; and Hedrick
watched her closely, a pleasurable excitement stirring
in his breast.
She did not go to her room after the
meal; the house was cold, possessing no furnace, and,
with Hedrick’s assistance, she carried out the
ashes from the library grate, and built a fire there.
She had just lighted it, and the kindling was beginning
to crackle, glowing rosily over her tired face, when
the bell rang.
“Will you see who it is, please, Hedrick?”
He went with alacrity, and, returning,
announced in an odd voice. “It’s
Dick Lindley. He wants to see you.”
“Me?” she murmured, wanly
surprised. She was kneeling before the fireplace,
wearing an old dress which was dusted with ashes, and
upon her hands a pair of worn-out gloves of her father’s.
Lindley appeared in the hall behind Hedrick, carrying
under his arm something wrapped in brown paper.
His expression led her to think that he had heard
of her father’s relapse, and came on that account.
“Don’t look at me, Richard,”
she said, smiling faintly as she rose, and stripping
her hands of the clumsy gloves. “It’s
good of you to come, though. Doctor Sloane thinks
he is going to be better again.”
Richard inclined his head gravely, but did not speak.
“Well,” said Hedrick with
a slight emphasis, “I guess I’ll go out
in the yard a while.” And with shining eyes
he left the room.
In the hall, out of range from the
library door, he executed a triumphant but noiseless
caper, and doubled with mirth, clapping his hand over
his mouth to stifle the effervescings of his joy.
He had recognized the ledger in the same wrapping
in which he had left it in Mrs. Lindley’s vestibule.
His moment had come: the climax of his enormous
joke, the repayment in some small measure for the
anguish he had so long endured. He crept silently
back toward the door, flattened his back against the
wall, and listened.
“Richard,” he heard Laura
say, a vague alarm in her voice, “what is it?
What is the matter?”
Then Lindley: “I did not
know what to do about it. I couldn’t think
of any sensible thing. I suppose what I am doing
is the stupidest of all the things I thought of, but
at least it’s honest so I’ve
brought it back to you myself. Take it, please.”
There was a crackling of the stiff
wrapping paper, a little pause, then a strange sound
from Laura. It was not vocal and no more than
just audible: it was a prolonged scream in a whisper.
Hedrick ventured an eye at the crack,
between the partly open door and its casing.
Lindley stood with his back to him, but the boy had
a clear view of Laura. She was leaning against
the wall, facing Richard, the book clutched in both
arms against her bosom, the wrapping paper on the
floor at her feet.
“I thought of sending it back
and pretending to think it had been left at my mother’s
house by mistake,” said Richard sadly, “and
of trying to make it seem that I hadn’t read
any of it. I thought of a dozen ways to pretend
I believed you hadn’t really meant me to read
it ”
Making a crucial effort, she managed to speak.
“You think I did mean ”
“Well,” he answered, with
a helpless shrug, “you sent it! But it’s
what’s in it that really matters, isn’t
it? I could have pretended anything in a note,
I suppose, if I had written instead of coming.
But I found that what I most dreaded was meeting you
again, and as we’ve got to meet, of course,
it seemed to me the only thing to do was to blunder
through a talk with you, somehow or another, and get
that part of it over. I thought the longer I put
off facing you, the worse it would be for both of
us and and the more embarrassing.
I’m no good at pretending, anyhow; and the thing
has happened. What use is there in not being
honest? Well?”
She did not try again to speak.
Her state was lamentable: it was all in her eyes.
Richard hung his head wretchedly,
turning partly away from her. “There’s
only one way to look at it,” he said
hesitatingly, and stammering. “That is there’s
only one thing to do: to forget that it’s
happened. I’m I oh,
well, I care for Cora altogether. She’s
got never to know about this. She hasn’t
any idea or suspicion of it, has she?”
Laura managed to shake her head.
“She never must have,”
he said. “Will you promise me to burn that
book now?”
She nodded slowly.
“I I’m awfully
sorry, Laura,” he said brokenly. “I’m
not idiot enough not to see that you’re suffering
horribly. I suppose I have done the most blundering
thing possible.” He stood a moment, irresolute,
then turned to the door. “Good-bye.”
Hedrick had just time to dive into
the hideous little room of the multitudinous owls
as Richard strode into the hall. Then, with the
closing of the front door, the boy was back at his
post.
Laura stood leaning against the wall,
the book clutched in her arms, as Richard had left
her. Slowly she began to sink, her eyes wide
open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid
down until she was sitting upon the floor. Her
arms relaxed and hung limp at her sides, letting the
book topple over in her lap, and she sat motionless.
One of her feet protruded from her
skirt, and the leaping firelight illumined it ruddily.
It was a graceful foot in an old shoe which had been
re-soled and patched. It seemed very still, that
patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever.
Hedrick knew that Laura had not fainted, but he wished
she would move her foot.
He went away. He went into the
owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long
time. Then he stole back again toward the library
door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless
shoe through the doorway as he came near. Then
he spied no more. He went out to the stable,
and, secluding himself in his studio, sat moodily
to meditate.
Something was the matter. Something
had gone wrong. He had thrown a bomb which he
had expected to go off with a stupendous bang, leaving
him, as the smoke cleared, looking down in merry triumph,
stinging his fallen enemies with his humour, withering
them with satire, and inquiring of them how it felt,
now they were getting it. But he was decidedly
untriumphant: he wished Laura had moved her foot
and that she hadn’t that patch upon her shoe.
He could not get his mind off that patch. He
began to feel very queer: it seemed to be somehow
because of the patch. If she had worn a pair
of new shoes that morning. . . . Yes, it was that
patch.
Thirteen is a dangerous age:
nothing is more subtle. The boy, inspired to
play the man, is beset by his own relapses into childhood,
and Hedrick was near a relapse.
By and by, he went into the house
again, to the library. Laura was not there, but
he found the fire almost smothered under heaping ashes.
She had burned her book.
He went into the room where the piano
was, and played “The Girl on the Saskatchewan”
with one finger; then went out to the porch and walked
up and down, whistling cheerily.
After that, he went upstairs and asked
Miss Peirce how his father was “feeling,”
receiving a noncommital reply; looked in at Cora’s
room; saw that his mother was lying asleep on Cora’s
bed and Cora herself examining the contents of a dressing-table
drawer; and withdrew. A moment later, he stood
in the passage outside Laura’s closed door listening.
There was no sound.
He retired to his own chamber, found
it unbearable, and, fascinated by Laura’s, returned
thither; and, after standing a long time in the passage,
knocked softly on the door.
“Laura,” he called, in
a rough and careless voice, “it’s kind
of a pretty day outdoors. If you’ve had
your nap, if I was you I’d go out for a walk.”
There was no response. “I’ll go with
you,” he added, “if you want me to.”
He listened again and heard nothing.
Then he turned the knob softly. The door was
unlocked; he opened it and went in.
Laura was sitting in a chair, with
her back to a window, her hands in her lap. She
was staring straight in front of her.
He came near her hesitatingly, and
at first she did not seem to see him or even to know
that she was not alone in the room. Then she
looked at him wonderingly, and, as he stood beside
her, lifted her right hand and set it gently upon
his head.
“Hedrick,” she said, “was
it you that took my book to ”
All at once he fell upon his knees,
hid his face in her lap, and burst into loud and passionate
sobbing.