CHAPTER X.
The Last Straw.
ALARIC did go to the mainland the next morning, and brought back a great surprise for me; a letter from Daddy! It had been hastily written on board the Bosnia, and sent back with the pilot
"Dear Little Princess," it read; "just a few lines to tell you how sorry I am that you are not sailing with me, but don't feel too badly about it. We'll go over next year together, sure, and do it all up in fine style. Fordyce told me he might run up to Sunset Island. Hope he does, you'll like him. Be a good girl and mind Aunt Julie, and I'll bring you the littlest, yappiest mutt of a Pekinese I can find. I'll write again from London. Love,
My eyes filled, and a lump came into my throat. Dear Daddy! How he remembered my lightest word! Two months before, in his office, I had simply raved about the most adorable Pekinese, a prize winner at the dog show, but he didn't buy it for me because of course I could not have kept it at Miss Farmingdale's. He hadn't forgotten, though. I smiled back as I thought of the time he would probably have getting it back to America.
"What is it, Maida?" asked Aunt Julie. "You are smiling all to yourself."
"I have a letter from Daddy," I replied. "Just a note, written on shipboard. He's going to bring me a dog."
"You'll be sorry. They're an awful nuisance," Bijou observed. "Do you know I heard one barking last night."
"You must have been dreaming," returned Aunt Julie. "There isn't a dog on the island."
I knew better, of course, but I didn't look at Monsieur Pelissier. I was rather sure that he knew, too.
"Say, I've got something to tell you." Alaric spoke to us all, but his eyes met his mother's. "There's somebody in that Barford bungalow."
"Impossible!" Aunt Julie exclaimed. "You know it hasn't been occupied for years."
"Well, it is now. I cruised down that way a little and I saw smoke coming out of the chimney, and there's a launch tied up at the dock."
"Good Heavens, the Barfords can't have returned!" There was something very like consternation in her voice, and I glanced quickly at her. She had turned very white, and the opened letter which she held in her hand trembled.
"Oh, no!" I cried, thoughtlessly. "Not the Barfords!"
The very next moment I saw what I had done, but it was too late.
"I—I have seen a young man there, with a dog," I replied confusedly. "I don't believe there is anyone else about the place."
"How is it that Mademoiselle knows this young man is not a Barford?" Monsieur Pelissier's voice was very calm, but there was a peculiar glint in his eyes. "You have perhaps talked with him, flirted with him, eh?"
"I believe she has!" cried Bijou suddenly, with a jangling, unpleasant laugh. "No wonder she slips away by herself all the time! You're slick, Maida!"
"I most certainly have not flirted with him!" I returned hotly. "I have spoken to him casually. I am surprised at your daring to use such a tone to me, Monsieur!"
"And I am surprised at you, Maida!" Aunt Julie cried. Her voice was cold and cuttingly distinct, and the lisp was gone. "Who is this man you have picked up?"
"He is a—friend of the Barfords, to whom they have lent their bungalow for a time," I stammered. I was on the verge of tears in my shame and disgust at their attitude, but some instinct warned me not to disclose Gilbert's identity. "And I didn't pick him up, Aunt Julie, not in the way you suggest. There was no harm whatever in my speaking to him. I have done nothing wrong."
"Nothing wrong? You wretched, low-bred little hussy! How dare you scrape acquaintance with a strange man!"
"Mother! Control yourself!" Lorna's voice in sharp command fell upon my stunned ears. "Maida meant, I am sure, to do nothing out of the way. How often have you seen him, talked with him?" she added, turning to me. "He knows who you are, of course?"
"No, he does not know who I am!" I retorted passionately. "And I decline to answer any more of your questions! I will not stand here and be catechised like a naughty chid! I have done nothing that I should not do, nothing that my father would object to, and I am not accountable to any of you for my actions."
"I'll show you whether you are or not!" Aunt Julie screamed, beside herself with rage. "You stuck-up, sanctimonious little brat! You'll find out before you're through with me that you're very much accountable to me for what you do! The idea! Sneaking out of here so innocently every day with your book, and carrying on a flirtation under my very nose with a perfect stranger! It takes you sly ones to be up to something devilish the first chance you get! You're not dealing with your Miss Farmingdale, now, and pulling the wool over her eyes—or your father either! I'll see that you have precious little opportunity in the future to go about philandering with a strange man, you deceitful, unprincipled girl!"
Lorna tried to interrupt her torrent of abuse, but she turned upon them all in a fury.
"It's a pity none of you knew what was going on!" she raged. "Haven't you got any eyes? Good heavens, can I do everything, be everywhere at once? I am responsible for her! What would her father say if anything should happen"
"Nothing will happen, mother," Lorna intervened. "No harm has been done. Maida was a little indiscreet that is all. You are very silly to get so excited."
"You'll make a fool of yourself, if you don't shut up!" Alaric spoke for the first time since he had launched that bomb-shell about Gilbert's presence, and he spoke with a harsh authority which his mother, irate as she was, seemed to recognize.
I looked straight into her vixenish, snapping eyes.
"You forget yourself, Mrs. Smith," I said quietly, although my voice trembled. "I am your guest, and I will go to my room until you remember that fact."
Without glancing at any of the rest, I turned and went into the house. I held my head very high, but I stumbled as I made my way up the stairs, for my eyes were blurred with tears. I had never been spoken to in that manner in all my life before. I felt as if I had been beaten, and my whole body was shaking with great sobs. I prayed that I might reach the Seclusion of my room before I broke down utterly.
I crept there blindly, locked the door, and flung myself on the couch in a paroxysm of weeping. Oh, how could Daddy have subjected me to this? Why did he leave me all alone with such dreadful people, at the mercy of that horrible woman! How vilely common she had shown herself to be! The Aunt Julie I remembered had been a simple, kindly, whole-hearted woman, not a low-minded, bitter-tongued virago! Certainly I had done nothing to call down upon me such an avalanche of invective. What wicked, coarse names she had hurled at me! I shuddered when I thought of them.
At any rate, this was the end, the very last straw! I sat up and dried my eyes, resolved upon that point. This beautiful island had become hateful to me, Hard-a-lee a veritable prison. I could not, would not endure it until Daddy came home. I would send for Miss Farmingdale at once, to come and take me away. If I explained the circumstances fully to her, I was sure that she would understand and act at once. I would write Daddy, too, and tell him everything, and I knew that he would not blame me. He might even hurry back to America, and take me away with him, but even if he didn't, it would be better, a thousand times better, to spend the rest of the summer alone with Miss Farmingdale in that austere, deserted school, than with these utterly impossible people! Only I must manage, somehow, to see Gilbert once more before I left and tell him the truth.
I rose, and started toward the writing-table, when I heard a step in the hallway, and someone knocked at the door.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"It's I, Lorna. Please let me come in for a minute, Maida."
Her tone was so pleading that I hesitated, but I felt that I could not bear to face any of them just yet after that disgraceful scene downstairs.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I would rather be alone, Lorna, if you don't mind."
"Maida, please! I want to speak to you. Please, dear!"
Reluctantly, I crossed to the door, and opened it. She came in quickly, closing the door behind her, and spoke without meeting my eyes.
"Maida, I am so very sorry that this has occurred. I want to apologize for mother, for all of us. We had no right to adopt that tone to you, to question you as if you had done something dreadful. And you mustn't mind mother; she never means a word she says when she gets into one of those tempers of hers. No one ever pays any attention to her."
"And why do they not?" I asked, bitterly. Why should your mother be permitted to insult people flagrantly, and not be held accountable for it? I am sorry to have to say this, Lorna, but I never have been so hurt, or so disgusted! Perhaps it was imprudent of me to have spoken to that young man without a proper introduction, but it certainly was no worse and under no circumstances would there have been any excuse for your mother's words."
"I know, dear, it was horrid of her, but you must try to understand, and overlook it. You must try to forgive her, Maida, for the sake of our old friendship."
I shook my head.
"She is not the Aunt Julie I used to know. She seems like a different woman, entirely.—And I cannot understand why you should all have questioned my actions as you did! If I owed an explanation to anyone, it was to your mother, most certainly not to any other guest beneath your roof."
Lorna, started, as if to speak, but checked herself suddenly, and I went on:
"Monsieur Pelissier's manner was insufferable. He has been insolent more than once, and forced himself upon me in spite of every effort on my part to show him that he was obnoxious to me. I have avoided an open rupture with him, avoided precipitating a scene which would have necessitated my cutting him deliberately in the future, because of the situation in which I found myself, as your mother's guest. You must see for yourself, Lorna, how impossible it would be for me to remain here any longer."
"You are thinking of going away?" she flashed a quick look at me. "Ah, my dear, you will not be so foolish, so unkind! Why, where would you go?"
"I have a friend, of whom my father thoroughly approves, with whom I can stay until his return. I am sorry that our friendship of years should end like this, but there is no alternative."
"Maida, you must listen to me!" she began impetuously, and then hesitated, as if choosing her words carefully. "You cannot go, you cannot leave us! You must dismiss that thought from your mind. Mother would never permit it, your father left you in her charge"
"He did not leave me here to be insulted, heaped with degrading abuse!" I interrupted hotly.
"I know. I am sorry, deeply sorry for my part in it all. I should not have questioned you, but I spoke on the impulse of the moment. Please don't think of ending our friendship in a spirit of anger, dear, after a silly quarrel. You cannot leave us like this."
"The quarrel was not of my making," I returned wearily. "Please don't let us discuss it any longer, it is of no use. I could never be happy here again."
"Maida, I have tried to be your friend, and it is as a friend that I speak to you now." She came to me, putting both hands upon my shoulders, and looking deeply into my stormy eyes. "It is out of the question for you to go. There is something else, too, that I must say to you. I know, of course, that your meeting with that young man was accidental and perfectly innocent, a mere trifling episode, but unless you wish to bring down trouble upon your head—such trouble as you have no conception of—you will not try to speak to, or even see him again. Don't misunderstand me, I am warning you because I like you, because I have learned to care for you all over again! Mother can be very hard, very hateful when she wants to be, and you must realize that until your father comes for you, you are absolutely in her hands."
I turned away from her, feeling helpless and desperate, and cut off from all the world. The thought of the days ahead of me, before I could communicate with Daddy, was unbearable. Miss Farmingdale was my one hope, and I must manage to reach her, somehow.
"I will leave you now," Lorna said gently. "Please think over what I have said, Maida, and try to make the best of things. You will feel differently, I know, when you have collected yourself. We have all been horrid to you, poor child, but we will do everything we can to help you to forget it. Try to put this morning's scene out of your mind and we will go on as before. It is the best, the only way."
She kissed me, and went quietly from the room, and I sank down in a chair by the window. I felt more calm, but her words had not shaken my resolution. I must bring myself, if I could, to part with them all, even Mrs. Smith, in an outward appearance of friendliness; it would be childish to leave in a huff, in spite of the treatment which had been accorded me. But leave I should, at the first opportunity which presented itself.
Luncheon was announced, but I refused to go downstairs, and presently Lucie appeared with a tray. I declined it, murmuring something about a severe headache, but she smiled superciliously, and placed the tray on the table. Evidently the quarrel and its cause were no secrets in the servant's quarters. It would be like Mrs. Smith to confide in her maids!
I left the food untouched; I knew that a morsel of it would have choked me. My thoughts turned to Gilbert, and I wondered how he felt when I had not come to the spring that morning as he had asked me to. Surely he must have known that something had happened; but then, of course, he might have thought that I did not wish to come, or that I was afraid of incurring my aunt's displeasure. Suppose he had been near and had overheard something of the quarrel? Mrs. Smith had screamed so loudly, in her rage, that it seemed to me she must have been heard all over the island. If he thought that his presence had brought trouble to me, he would go away, and I should never see him again, at least not until I escaped from this miserable environment, and Daddy was home once more. And then he might have gone off to the ends of the earth on one of his expeditions, and not return for years and years! Oh, I must manage to elude them, somehow, and see him just once again!
The afternoon was well advanced, when I heard the sound which I had been dreading; Mrs. Smith's step outside my door. She tapped lightly but insistently, and feeling that I had no choice, I said: "Come in."
"Maida, my dear child," she began as she crossed the room. "I have come to tell you how sorry I am that I lost my temper with you this morning. I would not have been unkind to dear Margaret's baby for anything in the world, but I was beside myself"
"We will leave my mother out of it, if you please, Mrs. Smith," I said firmly, although my lips trembled. How dared she mention her name after calling me a low-bred hussy!
"Don't say 'Mrs. Smith' in that cold way, dearie, I can't bear it! Call me Aunt Julie' just as you did ever since you first learned to talk!" she sniffed and touched her eyes with her handkerchief. "If you knew how deeply I regretted my harshness, you would forgive me, I am sure. I was frantic at the thought that you might have done something foolish, and your father would hold me accountable. You are only just out of school, you are ignorant of the ways of the world, and of men and their motives, and you might so easily have gotten entangled in some love affair with this person, and then what would your father have said to me? It was wrong of you to speak to him, Maida, I am sure that you will acknowledge that in your heart, but I am to blame for not watching you more closely—I mean, taking better care of you."
"It was wrong of me to speak to him in the first place, I know," I said, adding a little confusedly. "That is, it would have been if he wasn't the—the sort of man he seems to be. He is quite all right, a gentleman"
"Ah, my dear, the so-called gentlemen are the worst pack of fortune hunters in the world! You can have no idea yet how you will be run after, persecuted by them, as 'Oil-Well' Waring's only child. You don't realize that you are one of the biggest catches in the country!"
I could have reminded her that her own daughters were in danger from fortune hunters, but I didn't.
"You forget, this young man has not the slightest idea that I am Oil-Well Waring's daughter. I—I scarcely know him, but I am sure of that."
"Well, my dear, there has been no harm done, and we will say nothing more about it. I know that you won't be so imprudent again. Only you will believe that I am very sorry for my rudeness, my unkindness to you this morning, and let me try to make amends for it? Lorna tells me that you suggested leaving us; Maida, you cannot think of it, it would break my heart if this little misunderstanding should end a life-long friendship! I cannot bear to have you discontented and unhappy, and I'm sure you won't be after you have had time to think it over."
"Really, I would rather go away," I protested. "You were very kind to ask me to stay here with you this summer, and I do appreciate it, but I feel now that it would be better if I did not."
"You are still hurt, poor child, and no wonder! Your father would never forgive me if I failed in my trust, and I don't mean to! " she added laughingly. "You can just dismiss the thought of running away from us, dearie, for I wouldn't let you go if I had to lock you up!"
I recoiled from her, and something like terror crept up into my heart. She had spoken with an assumption of playfulness, but beneath the lightness there was an underlying note of purpose.
I believed that she was quite capable of putting her facetious threat into execution!
"You haven't eaten a bit of lunch!" she went on, solicitously. "You must be really faint! I'll send you up some nice hot tea and you must try and rest a little. Come, let us kiss and make up, and we will forget all about it!"
She came to me, and I suffered her to kiss my cheek, but I could not speak.
When the door closed behind me, I stumbled over to my desk. Miss Farmingdale must come at once and take me away! I would not be kept prisoner here against my will!
I tried to compose myself to write, but my hand trembled so I could scarcely hold the pen, and the words would noi, take coherent form in my mind. All at once, as I sat struggling with my task, the sound of voices came to me through the open window, from the veranda below. I rose, and looked out. Bijou and Alaric stood there almost directly beneath my window. She looked sullen and peevish, and he seemed to be expostulating with her. I had no conscious intention of listening, but involuntarily I paused, and in a moment she spoke.
"I don't care, it's easy for you to talk, I suppose you're stuck on her, too! It's sickening to have to keep on toadying to that little snob, with her airs and her graces, and etiquette and all that rot about being our guest! Gee! I'll be glad, I can tell you, when it's over, and she's gone! I hate the sight of her, and I'd like to tell her a thing or two! Little sneak! I wish I'd known there was another man on this island!"
Alaric chuckled.
"She saw him first, whoever he is!" he remarked. "And you'd better take a tip from me, and behave yourself, and treat her decently."
"Oh, I've got to I suppose," she returned with a pout "But she's here, fast enough, and here she'll stay until she goes to her father. She's no better than we are, after all. 'Oil-Well Waring's' daughter! I don't see why we should submit to her nonsense! If it was up to me, I'd soon show her where she stood!"
I shrank back from the window, covering my ears. What a hateful, hateful girl she was! I knew now where I stood, without her showing me; and I knew where I would stand in a few days, if I had to swim ashore, and make my way alone to Miss Farmingdale. Then a sudden thought flashed across my mind. I wasn't alone, after all. I wasn't quite helpless. There was Gilbert!