CHAPTER VII
THE CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL
What a gay luncheon was that given in honor of the carpenters and plumbers! The huge hamper produced such a variety of goodies and the quantity was quite up to the quality, so that Josie, while she was thankful that Mary Louise had not invited the Wrights to remain, nevertheless wondered at her statement that there was not food enough for the extra mouths. There seemed to be food enough for a whole regiment, but when she saw how Danny and his friends attacked the provisions, she realized that Mary Louise had not been guilty of the polite fabrication which she feared.
Empty packing boxes were turned over and covered with white crepe tablecloths and the table set with paper plates and drinking cups and Japanese napkins. Piles of sandwiches, dishes of salad and cold meats, pickles and olives were placed thereon and the center decoration consisted of a great Lady Baltimore cake.
“It’s the birthday cake for the Higgledy-Piggledy,” explained Mary Louise, sticking in the center a pink candle.
“But it’s not a year old yet,” objected Billy McGraw. “It’s just born, I should say.”
“But this is a Japanese spread, you see,” laughed Mary Louise, “with Japanese napkins and tablecloths, Japanese crab salad, and so forth, and you know the Japs count their kids’ birthdays from the time they are born and a new born Japanese baby is one year old.”
“I sit corrected,” said Billy. “When do we eat?”
“Isn’t he the limit?” asked James Drake, another one of Danny’s chums who had fought with him in the Dorfield regiment. “I have never seen the likes of Billy for feeding his face.”
“Some faces are meant to be fed,” suggested Bob Dulaney, the young newspaper man who had made such an impression on Margaret Wright the evening before at the dance. “Billy’s face is that kind of face, one crying out to be fed. I was sure relieved when the armistice was signed before Billy got a chance to catch a bomb in that mouth of his.”
Billy grinned delightedly at this sally. His mouth was large, but it was saved from ugliness by thirty-two perfect teeth.
“What’s the use of my coming safe out of the trenches if you shoot off your gab and hit me in my fatal spot, you old ink pot?”
Bob Dulaney was, like Danny Dexter, not a native of Dorfield, but he had fought with that regiment during the war and after peace was declared had drifted to the spot where so many of his friends lived and, having obtained a position on the Recorder, had decided to settle in the pleasant old town. He was a delightful young man, full of wit and humor and quite as popular with the regiment as Danny himself. He had joined Danny in his undertaking of doing the carpentering and plumbing for the girls, although he was well known to have absolutely no mechanical skill.
“The only nail Bob ever hits on the head is a verbal one,” Danny explained, “but he hits them all right. He has come along to help lift and carry, not that he is much on that, unless it is an argument which is to be carried on.”
“He is some lifter too,” suggested Tim Turner, one of the other young men.
“Right you are!” laughed James Drake. “Remember the old cock he lifted off the roost that night on the outskirts of Nancy?”
“Remember it! I’ll never forget it, and how he went back for the ding dong,” said Tim.
“What’s a ding dong?” asked Josie, innocently.
“That’s Tim’s French for turkey,” cried Billy. “He means dindon.”
“Oh,” blushed Josie, “excuse me!”
“Not at all,” said Tim, blushing in his turn.
“You mean you won’t excuse her?” teased Billy.
“I mean—I mean—Oh you dry up!”
“But when are we to eat?” persisted Billy.
“Laura Hilton and Lucile Neal were coming in to help us,” said Mary Louise. “They will be along in a minute. It is really not quite time. I’m sorry you are so hungry.”
“Sorry! I’m glad, terribly glad—in fact, I’m thanking God for the room that is in me,” declared Bob Dulaney. “But let’s wait for the young ladies if it takes all day.”
“I do wish Irene could have come,” sighed Mary Louise. “I hated to drive off without her. She looked so sweet and patient sitting there in her chair and waving to me as cheerfully as though she expected to be one of the party. I left her in our garden where she loves to wheel her chair.”
“Who is Irene?” asked Bob Dulaney.
“Oh, Irene MacFarlane is my very best friend,” explained Mary Louise. “She is lame and has to spend all her waking hours in a wheel chair. She gets around remarkably well, but can’t go anywhere unless there is an elevator, as stairs are too much for her. I do wish Josie and Elizabeth could have found a place on the ground floor, just for Irene’s sake.”
“I wish we could have,” said Josie, “especially as Irene is almost a member of our firm. She is to take charge of our needlework department, but we shall have to carry everything to her.”
“If you only had an elevator,” sighed Mary Louise wistfully, the picture of her poor friend still in her mind, sitting so patiently in her chair, her fair smooth brow expressing peace and contentment when she must have felt some chagrin at Fate that she could not join the merry crowd at the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.
“I forgot something important!” exclaimed Danny suddenly. “Can you put off luncheon just about ten minutes?”
“Why, of course, if you must go,” said Mary Louise. “Laura and Lucile will be here in two minutes,” consulting her tiny wrist watch. “Lucile inherits too much efficiency from her father ever to be a minute late.”
“Just a minute, sweetheart,” Danny whispered. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
“I doubt that,” smiled Mary Louise with a meaning understood by the happy Danny.
“Come on, Bob! You are the person who has to help lift. You come with me, please.”
“More bath tubs or another gas stove?” asked Bob as he raced down the steps after Danny. The two young men jumped into the car and were off and around the corner on two wheels before an excited cop had time to read their fast disappearing number.
“My Mary Louise wants something and I’m going to get it for her.”
“I heard her say she wanted an elevator. Is that what you are going to get?”
“Yes! When I can manage it, but that shall have to wait awhile until I can make my plans. Now I’m going to get Irene and you and I are going to carry her upstairs. She doesn’t weigh much.”
“Fine! I reckon we could manage her between us even though she weighed five hundred. How did you happen to think of it?”
“Well, you see I feel so terribly unworthy of Mary Louise that I made up my mind that the only way I could make up in the least little teensy weensy bit to her for what she is and what she has done and is going to do for me in marrying me is never to let her express a single desire without trying to gratify it.”
“Mighty noble of you, old fellow, but mightn’t you spoil her if you persist in such a policy?”
“Spoil my Mary Louise! Why, man, she is pure gold. You could not spoil her if you tried. It would have been done long ago by her grandfather and her friends if it could have been done. She never wants anything for herself. It is always for others.”
“Well, I am glad to be doing something for Miss Burrows, but I am pretty glad if we can help give the poor lame girl a lift too.”
When Irene saw Mary Louise drive off in her car with Dilsy, the housemaid, sitting on the back seat holding the huge hamper of lunch on her knees, it had taken all of her self-control not to show how, for the moment, the realization of her lameness, her handicap, was almost more than she could bear. She was able to keep an unruffled brow and to smile bravely, waving her handkerchief until the car was out of sight. Then she bowed her head and, in spite of her determination not to give way, she wept a few bitter tears.
She said to herself:
“Irene MacFarlane, I am ashamed of you. The idea of your being such a baby. I know you are missing lots of fun, about the best kind of fun. I know you do miss a lot of things, but stop whining and think of all the wonderful things that do come to you. Think of the joy of having such a friend as Mary Louise. Think of the good health you have in spite of your lameness. Think of all the books you can read. Think of the pupils you get in music. Think of the new Victrola Mary Louise’s Grandpa Jim gave you. Think of all the wonderful records you own and all you are to own in future. Think of the mockingbird singing now in the hedge. Think of Uncle Peter and Aunt Hannah and how they love you. Powder your nose this minute so they won’t know you have been making a baby of yourself!”
She produced from her work bag a tiny vanity case and carefully powdered her exceedingly well formed nose, looking critically at herself the while.
“You are not a bad looking person, Irene MacFarlane, but if you turn crybaby you’ll be hideous. Hold up your head and behave yourself if you have a spark of sense.” She laughed and held up her head and then in a low tone recited Henley’s Invictus.
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
She had begun in a whisper, but as the poem clutched her heart strings, as that particular poem always did, she spoke aloud. Her voice was singularly clear and musical. She had not noticed a car stopping at the entrance to Colonel Hathaway’s nor did she realize that two young men were walking towards her across the close cut grass.
Danny and Bob took off their hats and stood with heads bowed while the girl finished her impassioned recitation of that gallant hearted poem.
“I felt kind of like I was in church,” Danny said to Mary Louise afterwards when telling her of the occurrence.
“And so you were,” she had replied. “Somehow the Divine which is within all of us is more apparent to the naked eye in Irene than in any one else I know. And where God is, there is his Church.”
When Irene looked around and saw the two young men, she was devoutly glad she had powdered her nose. Irene did have much of the Divine within her but she also had enough of the feminine to wish to appear at her best when good looking young men suddenly came upon her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “How do you do, Danny?”
“I do finely except that I am starving and I can’t eat until you consent to come eat with us. This is my friend Mr. Dulaney, Bob for short. And, Bob, this is our best friend, Miss MacFarlane, Irene for all times.”
“How do you do, Bob for Short?”
“And how do you do, Irene for all Time?”
He took the lame girl’s hand in his and looked earnestly in her eyes. The skillful use of the vanity case did not deceive him. He saw in her eyes that she had been suffering, and that not many minutes before. Powdering her nose had not thrown dust in his eyes if it did fool Danny. He saw and understood. The calm peace of her brow he felt was but a camouflage worked by an indomitable will to conceal the anguish of soul the poor girl must often have suffered. His gaze was so kind that Irene felt she had made a new friend.
“Will you go?” asked Danny. “Lunch in the shop awaits us.”
“But I can’t get up stairs,” faltered Irene. “You see, there is no elevator.”
“Yes there is—a human elevator like this,” and grasping wrists the young men formed what children call a basket and stooped invitingly in front of Irene’s chair. “Mary Louise is sad without you and you know we can’t let Mary Louise be sad.”
“So are we all, at least so am I, now that I have seen Irene for all Time. Put on your hat and come on, please do,” Bob entreated.
“But I am too heavy.”
“Heavy! Why we have carried in a porcelain bath tub and a gas range. I am no good except to carry on,” insisted Bob. “Must I tell anyone you are gone?”
“No, I live right next door, but Aunt Hannah is out and she will know I am with Mary Louise if I’m not at home.”
“Here is your hat, so tie it on,” he said, taking a pretty garden hat from the back of Irene’s chair. “What a nice hat! I certainly do like hats that have some raison d’etre. Now this hat really shades and still one can see under it,” he laughed, peeping under the brim and, without any by your leave, he stooped and picked Irene up in his strong arms and started for the car.
“We don’t need a basket just now, I can tackle this burden alone. Danny, you can climb in and get up steam.” Tenderly he deposited Irene on the back seat and got in beside her and away they speeded for the postponed luncheon.
“I think it is great for you to pick up and come without even having to fluff up your hair or change your dress,” Bob said, looking admiringly at the neat little lawn frock worn by his companion.
The first thing one noted about Irene MacFarlane was her exquisite neatness and freshness. Her hair was soft and abundant and the glossy coils gave evidence of much brushing. Her complexion was clear and, while not rosy, still there was a soft glow of health in the oval of her cheeks. No longer was the lame girl delicate but, under the watchful care of Aunt Hannah and Mary Louise, she had thrown off the fragility of her early girlhood and now could boast of almost perfect health. Of course, her form of exercise was restricted, but what gymnastics she could do she did religiously. The consequence was in those slender arms and well formed shoulders there was a great deal of strength and under the artistic tapering of her fingers there was concealed a grip of steel. The lines of her figure were good. Nature had meant her for a “perfect woman, nobly planned,” but the disease which had attacked her in infancy had withered and enfeebled the lower limbs.
Irene’s clothes were of extreme simplicity but her skill with a needle was manifest in the well fitting frocks which she pressed herself with the help of a lap-board and an electric iron. There was never a wrinkle in Irene MacFarlane’s dress, but nobody ever saw her fussing over her clothes. When she arose in the morning, she dressed for the day. Mary Louise used to say her friend reminded her always of a narcissus flower, not the hot-house kind but the ones that came up year after year in Grandpa Jim’s old-fashioned flower beds.