_ CHAPTER XV. IN SURE-ENOUGH COUNTRY
One morning, more than a month after the closing days of school, Abbott Ashton chanced to look from his bedroom window as Hamilton Gregory's buggy, with Fran in it, passed.
There were no more examination-papers for Abbott to struggle with; but, like bees who spend the pleasantest weather in hardest work, he was laying up mathematical sweetness and psychological succulence against the day when he might become a professor at Yale or Harvard.
Unthrifty Fran, on the contrary, was bent upon no mission of self- improvement. Long fishing-poles projecting from the back of the buggy, protested against the commercialism of the age; their yellow hue streaked the somber background of a money-getting world, while the very joints of the poles mocked at continuity of purpose.
By Fran's side, Abbott discovered a man. True, it was "only" Simon Jefferson; still, for all his fifty years and his weak heart, it was not as if it were some pleasant respectable woman--say Simon's mother. However, old ladies do not sit upon creek-banks.
The thought of sitting upon the bank of a stream suggested to Abbott that it would be agreeable to pursue his studies in the open air. The June morning had not yet had its dewy sweetness burned away by a droughty old sun. Abbott snatched up some books and went below. In almost every front yard there were roses. Up and down the street, they bloomed in all colors, with delicate, penetrating, intoxicating fragrance. They were not hidden away in miserly back-gardens, these roses; they smiled for the meanest beggar, for the most self- sufficient tramp, for the knowledge-burdened scholar, for the whistling driver of the grocer's wagon. They had often smiled in vain for Abbott Ashton, but that was before he had made the bewildering discovery that they were like Fran.
On the green veranda he paused to inhale their fragrance.
"I'm glad you've left your room," said Miss Sapphira, all innocence, all kindness. "You'll study yourself to death. It won't make any more of life to take it hard--there's just so much for every man."
Abbott smiled abstractedly. He heard nothing but the voices of the roses.
Huge and serious, Miss Sapphira sat in the shadow of the bay-window. Against the wall were arranged sturdy round-backed wooden chairs, each of which could have received the landlady's person without a quiver of a spindle. Everything about Abbott seemed too carefully ordered--he pined for the woods--some mossy bank sloping to a purling stream.
Suddenly Miss Sapphira grew ponderously significant. Her massive head trembled from a weight of meaning not to be lifted lightly in mere words, her double chins consolidated, and her mouth became as the granite door of a cave sealed against the too-curious.
Abbott paused uneasily before his meditated flight--"Have you heard any news?"
She answered almost tragically, "Board meeting, to-night."
Ordinarily, teachers for the next year were selected before the close of the spring term; only those "on the inside" knew that the fateful board meeting had been delayed week after week because of disagreement over the superintendency. There was so much dissatisfaction over Abbott Ashton--because of "so much talk"--that even Robert Clinton had thought it best to wait, that the young man might virtually be put upon good behavior.
"To-night," the young man repeated with a thrill. He realized how important this meeting would prove in shaping his future. Miss Sapphira was too appallingly significant to mean otherwise. If anybody was on the "inside" it was the chairman's sister.
"Yes," she said warningly. "And Bob is determined to do his duty. He never went very far in his own education because he didn't expect to be a school-teacher--but ever since he's been chairman of the school- board, he's aimed to have the best teachers, so the children can be taught right; most of 'em are poor and may want to teach, too, when they're grown. I think all the board'll be for you to-night, Abbott, and I've been glad to notice that for the last month, there's been less talk. And by the way," she added, "that Fran-girl went by with Simon Jefferson just now, the two of them in Brother Gregory's buggy. They're going to Blubb's Riffle--he with his weak heart, and her with that sly smile of hers, and it's a full three mile!"
Abbott did not volunteer that he had seen them pass, but his face showed the ostensible integrity of a jam-thief, who for once finds himself innocent when missing jam is mentioned.
She was not convinced by his look of guilelessness. "You seem to be carrying away your books."
"I want to breathe in this June morning without taking it strained through window-screens," he explained.
Miss Sapphira gave something like a choked cough, and compressed her lips. "Abbott," she said, looking at him sidewise, "please step to the telephone, and call up Bob--he's at the store. Tell him to leave the clerk in charge and hitch up and take me for a little drive. I want some of this June morning myself."
Abbott obeyed with alacrity. On his return, Miss Sapphira said, "Bob's going to fight for you at the board meeting, Abbott. We'll do what we can, and I hope you'll help yourself. I don't wish any harm to that Fran-girl. Bob says I'm always expecting the worst of people and I guess I am; but I must say I don't expect half as bad as they turn out."
As Abbott went down the fragrant street with its cool hose-refreshed pavements, its languorous shadows athwart rose-bush and picket fence, its hopeful weeds already peering through crevices where plank sidewalks maintained their worm-eaten right of way, he was in no dewy- morning mood. He understood what those wise nods had meant, and he was in no frame of mind for such wisdom. He meant to go far, far away from the boarding-house, from the environment of schools and school-boards, from Littleburg with its atmosphere of ridiculous gossip.
Of course he could have gone just as far, if he had not chosen the direction of Blubb's Riffle--but he had to take some direction. He halted before he came in sight of the stream; if Fran had a mind to fish with Simon Jefferson, he would not spoil her sport.
He found a comfortable log where he might study under the gracious sky. Across the road, a bill-board flaunted a many-colored advertisement, but it did not distract his attention--it had lost its novelty from over-production. There was to be a Street Carnival beginning July first. There would be a Fortune Teller, a Lion Show, a Snake Den, etc. The Fourth of July would be the Big Day; a Day of Confetti, of Fireworks, of Riotous Mirth and patriotism--the last word was the only one on the bill not capitalized.
Abbott studied hard. He did not learn much--there seemed a bird in every line.
When he closed his books, scarcely knowing why, and decided to ramble, it was with no intention of seeking Fran. Miss Sapphira might have guessed what would happen, but in perfect innocence, the young man strolled, seeking a grassy by-road, seldom used, redolent of bush, tree, vine, dust-laden weed. It was a road where the sun seemed almost a stranger; a road gone to sleep and dreaming of the feet of stealthy Indians, of noisy settlers, and skilful trappers. All such fretful bits of life had the old road drained into oblivion, and now it seemed to call on Abbott to share their fate, the fate of the forgotten.
But the road lost its mystic meaning when Abbott discovered Fran. Suddenly it became only a road--nay, it became nothing. It seemed that the sight of Fran always made wreckage of the world about her.
She was sitting in the Gregory buggy, but, most surprising of all, there was no horse between the shafts--no horse was to be seen, anywhere. Best of all, no Simon Jefferson was visible. Fran in the buggy--that was all. Slow traveling, indeed, even for this sleepy old road!
"Not in a hurry, are you?"
"I've arrived," Fran said, in unfriendly tone.
Smaller than ever, she appeared, shrinking back in a corner of the seat, as if the vital qualities of her being were compressed to bring all within the scope of one eyeflash. Abbott loved the laced shadows of the trees upon the bared head, he adored the green lap-robe protecting her feet. The buggy-top was down and the trees from either side strove each to be first, to darken Fran's black hair with shadow upon shade.
"Are you tired of fishing, Fran?"
"Yes, and of being fished."
She had closed the door in his face, but he said--as through the keyhole--"Does that mean for me to go away?"
"You are a pretty good friend, Mr. Ashton," she said with a curl of her lip, "I mean--when we are alone."
"'While we're together, and after we part'," he quoted. "Fran, surely you don't feel toward me the way you are looking."
"Exactly as I'm looking at you, that's the way I feel. Stand there as long as you please--"
"I don't want to stand a moment longer. I want to sit with you in the buggy. Please don't be so--so old!"
Fran laughed out musically, but immediately declared: "I laughed because you are unexpected; it doesn't mean I like you any better. I hate friendship that shows itself only in private. Mr. Chameleon, I like people to show their true colors."
"I am not Mr. Chameleon, and I want to sit in your buggy."
"Well, then get in the very farthest corner. Now look me in the eyes."
"And oh, Fran, you have such eyes! They are so marvelously--er-- unfriendly."
"I'm glad you ended up that way. Now look me in the eyes. Suppose you should see the school-board sailing down the road, Miss Sapphira thrown in. What would you do?"
"What should I do?"
"Hide, I suppose," said Fran, suddenly rippling.
"Then you look me in the eyes and listen to
me," he said impressively. "Weigh my words--have you scales strong enough?"
"Put 'em on slow and careful."
"I am
not Mr. Chameleon for I show my true color. And I
am a real friend, no matter what kind of tree I am--" He paused, groping for a word.
"Up?" she suggested, with a sudden chuckle. "All right--let the school-board come. But you don't seem surprised to see me here in the buggy without Mr. Simon."
"When Mr. Simon comes, he'll find me right here," Abbott declared. "Fran, please don't be always showing your worst side to the town; when you laugh at people's standards, they think you queer--and you can't imagine just how much you are to me."
"Huh!" Fran sniffed. "I'd hate to be anybody's friend and have my friendship as little use as yours has been to me."
He was deeply wounded. "I've tried to give good advice--"
"I don't need advice, I want help in carrying out what I already know." Her voice vibrated. "You're afraid of losing your position if you have anything to do with me. Of course I'm queer. Can I help it, when I have no real home, and nobody cares whether I go or stay?"
"You know I care, Fran."
Fran caught her lip between her teeth as if to hold herself steady. "Oh, let's drive," she said recklessly, striking at the dashboard with the whip, and shaking her hair about her face till she looked the elfish child he had first known.
"Fran, you know I care--you know it."
"We'll drive into Sure-Enough Country," she said with a half-smile showing on the side of her face next him. "Whoa! Here we are. All who live in Sure-Enough Country are sure-enough people--whatever they say is true. Goodness!" She opened her eyes very wide--"It's awful dangerous to talk in Sure-Enough Country." She put up the whip, and folded her hands.
"I'm glad we're here, Fran, for you have your friendly look."
"That's because I really do like you. Let's talk about yourself--how you expect to be what you'll be--you're nothing yet, you know, Abbott; but how did you come to determine to be something?"
Into Abbott's smile stole something tender and sacred. "It was all my mother," he explained simply. "She died before I received my state certificate, but she thought I'd be a great man--so I am trying for it."
"And she'll never know," Fran lamented.
She slipped her hand into his. "Didn't
I have a mother? Oh, these mothers! And who can make mother-wishes come true? Well! And you just studied with all your might; and you'll keep on and on, till you're... out of my reach, of course. Which would have suited your mother, too." She withdrew her hand.
"My mother would have loved you," he declared, for he did not understand, so well as Fran, about mothers' liking for strange young ladies who train lions.
"Mine would you," Fran asserted, with more reason.
Abbott, conscious of a dreadful emptiness, took Fran's hand again. "I'll never be out of your reach, Fran."
She did not seek to draw away, but said, with dark meaning, "Remember the bridge at midnight."
"I remember how you looked, with the moonlight silvering your face-- you were just beautiful that night, little Nonpareil!"
"But not quite so in daylight," murmured Fran wickedly, "as this morning?"
"Anyway," he answered desperately, "you look as I'd have you look--can you ask more than that, since I can't?"
"My chin is so sharp," she murmured.
"Yes," he said, softly feeling the warm little fingers, one by one, as if to make sure all were there. "That's the way I like it--sharp."
"And I'm so ridiculously thin--"
"You're nothing like so thin as when you first came to Littleburg," he declared. "I've noticed how you are--have been--I mean..."
"Filling out?" cried Fran gleefully. "Oh, yes, and I'm so glad you know, because since I've been wearing long dresses, I've been afraid you'd never find it out, and would always be thinking of me as you saw me at the beginning. But I am--yes--filling out."
"And your little feet, Fran--"
"Yes, I always had a small foot. But let's get off of this subject."
"Not until I say something about your smile--oh, Fran, that smile!"
"The subject, now," remarked Fran, "naturally returns to Grace Noir."
"Please, Fran!"
"Yes--and I am going to say something to offend you; but honestly, Abbott, it's for your good. If you'll keep holding my hand, I'll know you can stand unpleasant truths. When you hold my hand, it seems to make everything so--so close."
"Everything is!" Abbott declared.
"I'll tell you why you hurt my feelings, Abbott. You've disappointed me twice. Oh, if I were a man, I'd show any meek-faced little hypocrite if she could prize secrets out of me. Just because it wears dresses and long hair, you think it an angel."
"Meaning Miss Grace, I presume?" remarked Abbott dryly. "But what is the secret, this time?"
"Didn't I trust you with the secret that I meant to apply for the position of secretary as soon as Grace Noir was out of the way? And I was just about to win the fight when here she came--hadn't been to the city at all, because you told her what I meant to do--handed her the secret, like a child giving up something it doesn't want."
"You are very unjust. I did not tell her your plan. I don't know how she found it out."
"From you; nobody else knew it."
"She did not learn it from me."
"--And that's what gets me!--you tell her everything, and don't even know that you tell. Just hypnotized! Answer my questions: the morning after I told you what I meant to do--standing there at the fence by the gate--confiding in you, telling you everything--I say, the next morning, didn't you tell Grace Noir all about it?"
"Certainly not."
"You had a conversation with her, didn't you?"
Abbott tried to remember, then said casually, "I believe we did meet on the street that morning."
"Yes," said Fran ironically, "I believe you did meet
somewhere. Of course she engaged you in her peculiar style of inquisitorial conversation?"
"We went down the street together."
"Now, prisoner at the bar, relate all that was said while going down the street together."
"Most charming, but unjust judge, not a word that I can remember, so it couldn't have been of any interest. I did tell her that since she-- yes, I remember now--since she was to be out of town all day, I would wait until to-morrow to bring her a book she wanted to borrow."
"Oh! And then she wanted to know who told you she would be out of town all day, didn't she?"
Abbott reflected deeply, then said with triumph, "Yes, she did. I remember that, too. She asked me how I knew she was going to the city with Bob Clinton. And I avoided telling her--it was rather neat. I merely said that it was the understanding they were to select the church music. Not another word was said on the subject."
"That was enough. Mighty neat. As soon as she saw you were trying to avoid a direct answer, she knew I'd told you. That gave her a clue to my leaving the choir practice before the rest of them. She guessed something important was up. She might not have guessed all the details, but she didn't dare leave me an open field. Well, Abbott, you are certainly an infant in her hands, but I guess you can't help it."
Self-pride was touched, and he retaliated:
"Fran, I hate to think of your being willing to take her position behind her back."
She crimsoned.
"You'd know how I feel about it," he went on, "if you understood her better. I know her duty drives her to act in opposition to you, and I'm sorry for it. But her religious ideals--"
"Abbott, be honest and answer--is there anything in it--this talk of doing God's will? Can people love God and hate one another? Oh, isn't it all just
words?" Her eyes burned fiercely. "I wouldn't
have the love that some folks give God, I'd feel myself insulted! I want something better than He gets. I want a love that holds out. I just hate shams," she went on, becoming more excited. "I don't care what fine names you give them--whether it's marriage, or education, or culture, or religion, if there's no heart in it, it's a sham, and I hate it. I hate a lie. But a thousand times more, do I hate a life that is a lie."
"Fran! You don't know what you are saying."
"Yes I do know what I'm saying. Is religion going to church? That's all I can see in it. I want to believe there's something else, I've honestly searched, for I wanted to be comforted, I tell you, I
need it. But I can't find any comfort in mortar and stained-windows. If lightning
ever strikes a church-member between services, is his face toward God? No, people just name something religion,--and then it's wrong to find fault with it. I want something that makes a man true to his wife, and makes a family live together in blessed harmony, something that's good on the streets and in the stores, something that makes people even treat a show-girl well. If there's anything in it, why doesn't a father--"
She snatched away her hand that she might cover her face, for she had burst into passionate weeping. "Why doesn't a father who's always talking about religion, and singing about it, and praying about it-- why doesn't that father draw his daughter to his breast...close, close to his heart--that's the only home she asks for--that's the home she has a right to, yes a right, I don't care how far she's wandered-- "
"Fran!" cried Abbott, in great distress. "Don't cry, little one!" He had no intelligent word, but his arm was full of meaning as it slipped about her. "Who has been unkind to you, Nonpareil?" She let her head sink upon his shoulder, as she sobbed without restraint. "What shams have pierced your pure heart? Am I the cause of any of these tears? Am I?"
"Yes," Fran answered, between her sobs, "you're the cause of all my happy tears." She nestled there with a movement of perfect trust; he drew her closer, and stroked her hair tenderly, trusting himself.
Presently she pulled herself to rights, lifted his arm from about her, and rested it on the back of the seat--a friendly compromise. Then she shook back her hair and raised her eyes and a faint smile came into the rosy face. "I'm so funny," she declared. "Sometimes I seem so strange that I need an introduction to myself." She looked into Abbott's eyes fleetingly, and drew in the corners of her mouth. "I guess, after all, there's something in religion!"
Abbott was so warmed by returning sunshine that his eyes shone. "Dear Fran!" he said--it was very hard to keep his arm where she had put it. She tried to look at him steadily, but somehow the light hurt her eyes. She could feel its warmth burning her cheeks.
"Oh, Fran," cried Abbott impulsively, "the bridge in the moonlight was nothing to the way you look now--so beautiful--and so much more than just beautiful..."
"This won't do," Fran exclaimed, hiding her face. "We must get back to Grace Noir immediately."
"Oh, Fran, oh, no,
please!" "I won't please. While we're in Sure-Enough Country, I mean to tell you the whole truth about Grace Noir." The name seemed to settle the atmosphere--she could look at him, now.
"I want you to understand that something is going to happen--must happen, just from the nature of things, and the nature of wives and husbands--and the other woman. Oh, you needn't frown at me, I've seen you look that
other way at me, so I know you, Abbott Ashton."
"Fran! Then you know that I--"
"No, you must listen. You've nothing important to tell
me that I don't know. I've found out the whole Gregory history from old Mrs. Jefferson, without her knowing that she was telling anything--she's a sort of 'Professor Ashton' in my hands--and I mean to tell you that history. You know that, for about three years, Mrs. Gregory hasn't gone to church--"
"You must admit that it doesn't appear well."
"Admit it? Yes, of course I must. And the world cares for appearances, and not for the truth. That's why it condemns Mrs. Gregory--and me-- and that's why I'm afraid the school-board will condemn you: just on account of appearances. For these past three years, the church has meant to Mrs. Gregory a building plus Grace Noir. You'll remember I'm rather mathematical--wasn't that a day, though, when you kept me in! I think it was the first time you learned the color of my eyes, wasn't it?"
"Your eyes," he said, "are the color of friendship." "Abbott, you say the dearest things--but let's get back to our equation. I don't mean that Mrs. Gregory got jealous of Grace Noir--I don't know how to explain--you can't handle cobwebs without marring them." She paused. The gossamer shades of sensibility which she would have defined, threatened to become coarsened by the mere specific gravity of words--such words as have been knocked about the world so long that a sort of material odor clings to them.
"Jealous of--
Miss Grace!" exclaimed Abbott reprovingly.
"Let's go back, and take a running jump right into the thick of it. When Mr. Gregory came to Littleburg, a complete stranger--and when he married,
she was a devoted church-member--always went, and took great interest in all his schemes to help folks--folks at a distance, you understand...She just devoured that religious magazine he edits-- yes, I'll admit, his religion shows up beautifully in print; the pictures of it are good, too. Old Mrs. Jefferson took pride in beingwheeled to church where she could see her son-in-law leading the music, and where she'd watch every gesture of the minister and catch the sound of his voice at the high places, where he cried
and, or
nevertheless. Sometimes Mrs. Jefferson could get a dozen
ands and
buts out of one discourse. Then comes your Grace Noir."
Abbott listened with absorbed attention. It was impossible not to be influenced by the voice that had grown to mean so much to him.
"Grace Noir is a person that's superhumanly good, but she's not happy in her own goodness; it hurts her, all the time, because other folks are not so good as she. You can't live in the house with her without wishing she'd make a mistake to show herself human, but she never does, she's always right. When it's time to go to church, that woman goes, I don't care if there's a blizzard. She's so fixed on being a martyr, that if nobody crosses her, she just makes herself a martyr out of the shortcomings of others."
"As for instance--?"
"As for instance, she suffered martyrdom every time Mrs. Gregory nestled in an arm-chair beside the cozy hearth, when a Ladies' Aid, or a Rally was beating its way through snow-drifts to the Walnut Street church. Mr. Gregory was like everybody else about Grace--he took her at her own value, and that gave the equation: to him, religion meant Walnut Street church plus Grace Noir. For a while, Mrs. Gregory clung to church-going with grim determination, but it wasn't any use. The Sunday-school would have button contests, or the Ladies' Aid would give chicken pie dinners down-town, and Mrs. Gregory would be a red button or a blue button, and she would have her pie; but she was always third--in her home, or at church, she was the third. It was her husband and his secretary that understood the Lord. Somehow she seemed to disturb conditions, merely by being present."
"Fran, you do not realize that your words--they intimate--"
"She disturbed conditions, Abbott. She was like a turned-up light at a seance. A successful manifestation calls for semi-gloom, and when those two were alone, they could get the current. Mr. Gregory was appalled because his wife quit attending church. Grace sympathized in his sorrow. It made him feel toward Grace Noir--but I'm up against a stone wall, Abbott, I haven't the word to describe his feeling, maybe there isn't any. Sad, you know, so sad, but awful sweet--the perfume of locust blossoms, or lilacs in the dew, because Grace has a straight nose and big splendid eyes, and such a form--she's the opposite of me in everything, except that she isn't a man--more's the pity!"
"Fran Nonpareil! Such wisdom terrifies me...such suspicions!" In this moment of hesitancy between conviction and rejection, Abbott felt oddly out of harmony with his little friend. She realized the effect she must necessarily be producing, yet she must continue; she had counted the cost and the danger. If she did not convince him, his thought of her could never be the same.
"Abbott, you may think I am talking from jealousy, and that I tried to get rid of Grace Noir so I could better my condition at her expense. I don't know how to make you see that my story is true. It tells itself. Oughtn't that to prove it? Mrs. Gregory has the dove's nature; she'd let the enemy have the spoils rather than come to blows. She lets him take his choice--here is she, yonder's the secretary. He isn't worthy of her if he chooses Grace--but his hesitation has proved him unworthy, anyhow. He'll never be to Mrs. Gregory what he was--but if she spoke out, there'd be the publicity--the lawyers, the newspapers, the staring in the streets...The old lady--her mother--is a fighter; she'd have driven out the secretary long ago. But Mrs. Gregory's idea seems to be--'If he can want
her, after I've given him myself, I'll not make a movement to interfere.'"
Abbott played delicately with the mere husk of this astounding revelation: "Have you talked with old Mrs. Jefferson about--about it?"
"She's too proud--wouldn't admit it. But I've slyly hinted...however, it's not the sort of story you could pour through the funnel of an ear-trumpet without getting wheat mixed with chaff. She'd misunderstand--the neighbors would get it first--anyway she wouldn't make a move because her daughter won't. It's you and I, Abbott, against Grace and Mr. Gregory."
He murmured, looking away, "You take me for granted, Fran."
"Yes." Fran's reply was almost a whisper. A sudden terror of what he might think of her, smote her heart. But she repeated bravely, "Yes!"
He turned, and she saw in his eyes a confiding trust that seemed to hedge her soul about. "And you can always take me for granted, Fran; and always is a long time."
"Not too long for you and me," said Fran, looking at him breathlessly.
"I may have felt," he said, "for some time, in a vague way, what you have told me. Of course it is evident that he prefers Miss Noir's society. But I have always thought--or hoped--or wanted to feel, that it was only the common tie of religion--"
"It was not the truth that you clung to, Abbott, but appearances. As for me, let truth kill rather than live as a sham. If Grace Noir stays, the worst is going to happen. She may not know how far she's going. He may not suspect he's doing wrong. People can make anything they want seem right in their own eyes. But I've found out that wickedness isn't stationary, it's got a sort of perpetual motion. If we don't drive Grace away, the crash will come."
"Fran--how you must love Mrs. Gregory!"
"She breaks my heart."
"Dear faithful Fran! What can we do?--I say
We, Fran, observe."
"Oh, you Abbott Ashton...just what I thought you! No, no, you mustn't interrupt. I'll manage Grace Noir, if you'll manage Bob Clinton."
"Where does Bob Clinton come in?"
"Grace is trying to open a door so he can come in. I mean a secret in Mr. Gregory's past. She suspects that there's a secret in his past, and she intends to send Bob to Springfield where Mr. Gregory left that secret. Bob will bring it to Littleburg. He'll hand it over to Grace, and then she'll have Mr. Gregory in her power--there'll be no getting her hands off him, after that."
"Surely you don't mean that Mr. Gregory did wrong when he was young, and that Miss Noir suspects it?"
"Bob will bring home the secret--and it will kill Mrs. Gregory, Abbott--and Grace will go off with him--I know how it'll end."
"What is this secret?"
"You are never to know, Abbott."
"Very well--so be it. But I don't believe Mr. Gregory ever did very wrong--he is too good a man."
"Isn't he daily breaking his wife's heart?" retorted Fran with a curl of the lip. "I call that murder."
"But still!--But I can't think he realizes it."
"Then," said Fran satirically, "we'll just call it manslaughter. When I think of his wife's meek patient face--don't you recall that look in her eyes of the wounded deer--and the thousands of times you've seen those two together, at church, on the street, in the library-- everywhere...seeing only each other, leaning closer, smiling deeper-- as if doing good meant getting close--Oh, Abbott, you know what I mean--don't you, don't you?"
"Yes!" cried Abbott sharply. "Fran, you are right. I have been--all of us have been--clinging to appearances. Yes, I know what you mean."
"You'll keep Bob Clinton from telling that secret, won't you? He's to go to-night, on the long journey--to-night, after the board meeting. It'll take him three or four days. Then he'll come back..."
"But he'll never tell the secret," Abbott declared. His mouth closed as by a spring.
Fran snatched up the whip, and leaned over as if to lash the empty shafts. She had suddenly become the child again. "We must drive out of Sure-Enough Country, now. Time to get back to the Make-Believe World. You know it isn't best to stay long in high altitudes. I've been pretty high--I feel like I've been breathing pretty close to--heaven." She stood up, and the lap-robe fell about her like green waves from which springs a laughing nymph.
Abbott still felt stunned. The crash of an ideal arouses the echo--"Is there no truth in the world?" But yes--Fran was here, Fran the adorable.
"Fran," he pleaded,
"don't drive out of Sure-Enough Country. Wait long enough for me to tell you what you are to me."
"I know what I am to you," Fran retorted--
"Git ap!" "But what am I to you? Don't drive so fast--the trees are racing past like mad. I won't leave Sure-Enough Country until I've told you all--"
"You shall! No, I'll not let you take this whip--"
"I will take it--let go--Fran! Blessed darling Fran--"
She gripped the whip tightly. He could not loosen her hold, but he could keep her hand in his, which was just as well. Still, a semblance of struggling was called for, and that is why the sound of approaching wheels was drowned in laughter.
"Here we are!" Fran cried wickedly--"Make-Believe World of Every-Day, and some of its inhabitants..."
A surrey had come down the seldom-used road--had Miss Sapphira followed Abbott in order to discover him with Fran? The suspicion was not just, but his conscience seemed to turn color--or was it his face? In fact, Fran and Abbott were both rather red--caused, possibly, by their struggle over the whip.
On the front seat of the surrey were Miss Sapphira and Bob Clinton. On the back seat was Simon Jefferson whose hairy hand gripped a halter fastened to a riderless horse: the very horse which should have been between the shafts of the Gregory buggy.
Miss Sapphira stared at Abbott, speechless. So
this is what he had meant by wanting the air unstrained by window-screens. Studying, indeed! Abbott, in his turn, stared speechlessly at the led horse.
Bob Clinton drew rein, and grasped his hay-colored mustache, inadequate to the situation. He glanced reproachfully at Abbott; the young fellow must know that his fate was to be decided this very night.
Abbott could not take his fill of the sight of Simon Jefferson whom he had fancied not far away, eyes glued on cork, hands in pockets to escape mosquitoes, sun on back, serenely fishing. He had supposed the horse grazing near by, enjoying semi-freedom with his grass. Now it seemed far otherwise. Miss Sapphira had even had him telephone to Bob to bring her hither. With his own hands he had dug his pitfall.
Fran, suddenly aware of her ridiculous attitude, sat down and began to laugh.
Bob Clinton inquired, "Taking a drive, Abb?"
Miss Sapphira set her heavy foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea--no
idea that we should find--should come upon--We are sorry to intrude." Had her life depended on it, Miss Sapphira could not have withheld a final touch--"Possibly you were not looking for Mr. Jefferson to come back
so soon." "Why," answered Abbott, stepping to the ground, "hardly so soon." At any rate, he felt that nothing was to be gained by staying in the buggy. "Is that the horse that belongs to this buggy? Let me hitch it up, Mr. Simon."
"This has been a terrible experience for me," growled Simon. All the same, he let Abbott do the work, but not as if he meant to repay him with gratitude.
"What was the matter with your horse, anyway?" Abbott cheerfully inquired.
Simon looked at him sourly. "Didn't Fran tell you that the horse got scared at her throwing rocks at my cork, and broke from the tree where I'd fastened it, and bolted for town?"
"Mr. Simon," said Fran innocently, "I don't believe the horse was mentioned once, while you were gone."
"It would be interesting to know what was," remarked Robert with humor so dry that apparently it choked him; he fell to coughing huskily.
Miss Sapphira gave him a look while he was struggling in his second paroxysm. It healed him by suggestion.
"Turn," said Miss Sapphira with becoming gravity. Robert, still under the influence of her thought-wave, solemnly drove her from the scene.
When the last buckle was clasped--"I came out here for a quiet peaceable fishing," said Simon.
"I've spent my time hunting horses, and being afraid something might happen to Fran."
"Mr. Ashton took care of me," Fran said reassuringly.
Simon cried explosively, "And who took care of
him?" He climbed in beside Fran and begrudgingly offered Abbott the imaginary space of a third occupant; but Abbott declared his preference for strolling.
"This has been a hard day for my heart," Simon grumbled, as he snatched up the whip vindictively.
The buggy rolled away.
"Mine, too," Abbott called after them emphatically.
Fran looked back at him, from over the lowered top. He saw her hand go to her bosom, then something fluttered in the air and fell in the grassy road. He darted after it as if it were a clue, showing the way to the princess' castle.
Perhaps it was. He pounced upon it--it was the Queen of Hearts. _