The House in the Hedge/Chapter 11
XI
I GO TO NEW LONDON
The Major didn't come, though, after all, for when auntie and I reached the station in the car, the agent came out with a telegram. Something had come up at the last moment, and now he didn't know when he would be able to get away. Aunt Myra was terribly disappointed, and so, of course, was I, only I had the consoling reflection that now I would not have to disappoint Mr. Reed. With only three days left, it would have been a shame not to have been able to go over there and cheer him up.
But when I went to the window the next morning it was raining hard, and so, of course, there was no visiting that day. I spent the morning writing letters; to Larry, to Jessamine Walton—who was just starting for Hot Springs—and to two other girl friends. But it was hard work, for there was so little to tell them. Naturally, I couldn't write to the girls about Mr. Reed, and there didn't seem to be anything else to write of. After luncheon the rain slowed down to a thick drizzle and I made Frank take me out in the car, much against Aunt Myra's wishes. She made him promise not to go faster than twelve miles, and be very careful about skidding. But creeping about country roads in a rain at twelve miles an hour isn't very exciting, and so I didn't stay out long. I mooned away the rest of the afternoon curled up in a chair in the library, with Fairfax and a box of chocolates and a novel. But the novel wasn't interesting. After all, real life is far more enthralling than stories, no matter how romantic they may be.
When I went to bed, I looked out across the garden at the House in the Hedge. The light was burning in Mr. Reed's room and I wondered if he had missed my visit. I hoped he had.
Three days later I left for New London. I wasn't awfully keen about going, but Larry wanted me to, and he's the best brother in the world and so I went. I said good-bye to Mr. Reed the day before.
“You'll be back Saturday?” he asked.
“Yes, probably Saturday morning.”
“Saturday's a long way off.”
“Only four days,” I said cheerfully.
“It's a great mistake to measure time by days and hours and weeks,” he said with a sigh. “It's easy enough to say a thing is four days distant, but when a day holds forty-eight hours or ninety-six hours instead of twenty-four, it is a trifle misleading. I suppose there will be quite a party on this yacht, Miss Marjorie?”
I counted them off on my fingers.
“Five. Mr. and Mrs. Hare, Jocelyn Hare, Ned Merrill, and myself; and Larry, of course, after the race is over.”
“I see. And who is this Ned Somebody?”
“Ned Merrill? He is Larry's particular chum at college. He lives in New York. You must have heard of him. He's a great tennis player.”
“Oh, that's the chap, eh? Yes, I've seen him play.” He didn't say anything more for a minute or so. Then he said: “Well, I hape you have an awfully good time, Miss Pryde.”
I wanted to say that I didn't expect to and that I'd much rather stay at home, but he was so kind of stiff and funny that I didn't. I just smiled and said I was certain to; that I loved boat races and was crazy about steam yachts. And after that the conversation sort of dwindled away, and Mr. Tully came out and looked at his watch most impolitely and I said good-bye. We shook hands rather formally.
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Reed. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate your kindness. It's been most awfully decent of you to come over and bore yourself with me, Miss Marjorie. I shan't forget it.”
“You talk as though you never expected to see me again,” I said irritably. “Really, Mr. Reed, I'm not going on a polar exploration trip.”
“Well, you'll find me right here when you get back,” he answered with a wry smile. “I promise not to leave. And if you should find time to drop over here again, you'll find someone who will be mighty glad to see you.”
He was so terribly polite, though, that it really sounded as though he was discharging me. Mr. Tully was strolling about at the other end of the porch.
“Of course, if you don't want me to come any more”
He was looking at one of his poor thin hands and he didn't raise his eyes. But after a moment, he muttered:
“It's hardly a question of wanting, Miss Marjorie. You might as well ask if I want the sun to shine.”
I waited for him to go on, but he didn't; just stared at his fingers as though he had never noticed them before. So I asked:
“Well, do you?”
Then he looked up and I rather wished I hadn't spoken.
“Little girl,” he said softly, “the sun means more to sick folks than to anyone else. Only—sometimes they can have too much of it—for their comfort.”
“Oh!” I said a little breathlessly. “But—you'll have four cloudy days, Mr. Reed, and the sun won't bother you.”
“Yes, they will be cloudy, sure enough,” he answered sadly. “And to make them worse, I shall know that the sun is shining somewhere else—perhaps for someone else.”
I knew what he meant, but I couldn't think of anything I could say. So I just laughed and told him that I hoped that by the time the sun came back again he would be glad to see it.
“There's no question about that,” he replied with a smile. “And meanwhile I hope the sun will be radiant and that there will be no clouds over the face of it. Good-bye, Miss Marjorie, and a pleasant trip.”
So we shook hands again, quite nicely this time, and I made him promise to take very good care of himself and be patient with Mr. Tully and get out of doors every day while I was gone.
“Still,” he objected, “I don't see what's the use of getting out of doors when the sun doesn't shine.”
“Oh, but it will shine,” I answered, pointing up through the trees. “There's my understudy, you see.”
“A poor substitute,” he answered. “Besides, I've heard of a star having an understudy, but never a sun.”
I had to take an early train the next morning in order to connect in Boston with the Knickerbocker Limited at ten. Just as I was getting into the car, Mr. Tully came hurrying over with a book in his hand.
“I sent for this some time ago,” he said, “but it came only last night. It's my 'Distribution of Wealth,' you know, Miss Pryde. I thought perhaps you'd like to look it over on the train.”
Fancy my reading political economy on the way to a Harvard-Yale boat race! But I thanked him as nicely as I knew how, for it was perfectly dear of him to remember, wasn't it? And I turned to the front of the book and found he had written on a fly-leaf: “To Miss Pryde, with the author's thanks and esteem. W. J. J. Tully.”
“Oh, thank you so much!” I said. “You see, Mr. Tully, this is the first book ever presented to me by the author and I shall always be terribly proud and stuck-up about it. And indeed I shall do my very best to understand it, but you mustn't expect too much of me, for I'm very, very stupid.”
“I fear I must differ with you on that,” said Mr. Tully gravely. “But if there should be anything that you—er—don't quite comprehend, I hope you'll let me explain, Miss Pryde. I wish you a pleasant journey.”
We shook hands and Frank started up, and the last I saw of Mr. Tully he was standing bare-headed under the elm, looking—bless him!—quite woebegone.
Traveling alone is awfully stupid and even “The Distribution of Wealth” failed to cheer me up. I managed a whole chapter between Providence and New London, but it was quite beyond my poor wits. Jocelyn and Ned were waiting for me at the station, and in ten minutes I was aboard the Onyx and we were sitting down to luncheon. I suppose I might write a whole chapter about those three days on the Thames, but somehow they don't seem to have much to do with my real story. Of course I had a dandy time, and when our crews, for the first time in, I've forgotten how many years, made a clean sweep of the races, I was just about as happy as any girl could be. Only all the time I was wishing that poor Mr. Reed might have been there to see. It seemed absolutely criminal to be there with flags flying, and whistles tooting, and folks shouting, while he was lying back at Eastmeadows with no one to cheer him up. The Hares weren't nearly so pleased as I was at the result, because Jocelyn's brother was a Yale freshman. But they were real nice about it. Larry rowed a wonderful race; everybody said so, even the papers; and when he came aboard afterwards, both Jocelyn and I hugged him to death. He told me to cut it out, but I noticed that he didn't seem to mind when Jocelyn got at him. The only thing that bothered me was Ned Merrill, and I didn't really mean to call him a “thing,” because he is really a perfectly dear boy. But he would insist on imagining himself in love with me, which, considering that he is only twenty years old, is rather ridiculous. I was a bit huffy with Larry when he told me that he had asked Ned down to Eastmeadows, but Larry is very fond of him, and, besides, when he explained that I was to invite Jocelyn down for two weeks, I understood perfectly. Ned was to amuse me so that he and Jocelyn could spoon. So I said all right and Jocelyn accepted the invitation, after pretending that she was terribly surprised, and her mother said she might go. On Friday we sailed to Larchmont and spent the night with the Hares. There was a ball at the Yacht Club and Ned proposed to me, for the third time, on the veranda, after the second extra. Of course I just laughed at him, and he got quite stately and sulked all the rest of the evening. But he was all right the next morning, when we went up to New York for the Boston train, he and Jocelyn and Larry and I.
It was almost three when we reached Eastmeadows. I could scarcely realize that I had been away such a short time. It seemed weeks. I was almost afraid to ask Frank if everything was all right. But I did, finally, and he said everything was, “everything but the cat, miss.”
“He's not dead?” I gasped.
“No, miss; he's lost. Miss Groves is terribly worried, but she's been thinking all along that he'd come back and so she didn't telegraph you.”
“When did he disappear, Frank?” I asked, wondering what had got into me that the news didn't affect me more.
“Well, we missed him the afternoon of the day you left. Miss Elise says she saw him playing on the lawn just before lunch eon and that's the last anyone saw of him. Mr. Quinn says he thinks he will come back.”
“I hope so,” I said. “Is—is everything all right at the House in the Hedge, Frank?”
“I can't say, ma'am, but I saw that Mr. Tully out walking yesterday. He looked all right.”