The Star in the Window (Grosset & Dunlap)/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
HE left Reba half an hour later at the door of the Alliance. She had barely spoken the whole evening. He had suggested he'd rather she didn't speak for a while—told her he'd just as soon she'd "mull over" for a few days what he'd said to her.
"You must feel kind of upset, and surprised about me to-night, miss," he said, with his intuitive appreciation. "I know. Mine's not a very pretty sort of story for such as you to listen to. I'd rather what I've told you stayed with you a while, and soaked in, so's when you have to, you can talk to me gentle and quiet-like. If you don't mind, miss, I'll go away to-night, just remembering how you said you don't want to be unkind to me—ever, without risking anything else you might have to tell me to spoil it."
It wasn't perhaps a very "pretty sort" of story for Reba to listen to, shielded as she had always been; but it wasn't unbeautiful. Parts of it were more richly, stirringly beautiful than anything she had ever heard. It swept over her, after she had climbed to her room that night, and stood gazing out at the glow that the city's lights made in the sky, how drab her life had been—how cramped and stunted in comparison to the sailor's. Nothing big in it. No great devotion—no great feeling of any kind. She had been buried, and everybody inside the gray house at the top of Chestnut Street had been buried along with her, under layers of mean little self-centered thoughts, mean little self-centered acts, for years and years. The sailor's life had a glow like the sky, Reba thought.
She couldn't go to sleep after she had crawled into the little bed in the corner. There was so much to think about! Ridgefield was only three months away, and yet a man had told her she was the only woman in his life, beside his mother. She believed, too, that she had been asked in marriage! If so—why, the magic wand had been waved over her, and she was no longer of the undesired.
Not that she could marry him. Of course not! He wasn't anybody she could marry, and take to Ridgefield, for instance; but anyhow, a man lived, such as he was, who had wanted her. No one could say she hadn't a right to a tender memory hereafter. Even Aunt Augusta's jibes would lose their edge now. Nathaniel Cawthorne had placed a crown upon Reba. She woke the next morning to the realization of its unfamiliar touch upon her brow, and with the queer sensation that she was somebody else. "No longer unwanted. No longer unwanted." Oh, more than a crown! The declaration of the stranger's regard for her completely surrounded Reba, cast about her a magical aura which made everything she looked at take on a roseate hue. The whole world seemed generous to Reba that morning. As she sat down at the breakfast-table, and heard herself greeted with a cheery salute or two, she glowed.
"Hello, Jeromey," sang out some one.
It was Mamie's particular nickname for her, but it was being adopted by many of the roomers in her corridor now. What a sound of good-fellowship it had! Oh, to be acceptable to one's neighbors, to feel oneself included in the world's kindliness, to be distinguished by some man's preference, even a man like the sailor, as she—strange, strange coincidence—as she now was distinguished, what warmth it kindled! It kindled, too, in Reba a new, shy self-confidence—a wistful desire to go more than half-way in smiles, greetings, and little acts of friendliness.
All day long the sound of her new friend's fervent voice recurred again and again to Reba, swooping down upon her at unaccountable moments and places, making her heart jump and sing. Crossing a crowded thoroughfare, dodging out of the path of a huge dray, passing into this class-room, out of that, the realization that somebody cared for her, more than he cared for anybody else in all the world, would pierce through Reba with a little sharp pleasing pain. It illumined the shopping-tour with Miss Park in the afternoon. The difference between her goddess and herself was not so great since the sailor's declaration. Reba, too, had been decorated; only once, true,—Miss Park was probably covered with badges—but once, once anyhow!
She rejoiced that her lover was so obviously unsuitable. There were so many fascinating paths she wanted to explore. She hadn't been to the theater once, yet, nor danced with a man; nor heard Grand Opera; nor ever dived off a raft into salt water. And the new gown that she had timidly confessed to Miss Park she wanted to be as fashionable as money could buy, (yes—blushing—she could afford to pay any amount, she guessed,) was still in process. The twenty-dollar hat, which Miss Park on a previous shopping-tour had exclaimed was perfect on her, but ridiculously expensive, and which secretly the next day Reba had stolen back and bought, hadn't been out of the little oblong room; nor did she have yet more than a mere smiling acquaintance with the stranger whom she saw lately in her mirror—pompadourless, hair uncrimped, lying smooth and parted, and done low like Miss Park's. Oh, there were worlds and worlds for Reba to discover; and the sailor's love, if she might call it that, unreturned though it was, added magic sweetness to her new freedom.
Reba little guessed throughout that roseate-colored day of hers that her hour of happiness was to be so short. She had no premonition, when she started on her shopping-tour with Miss Park in the early afternoon, that a big, black, steam-driven monster, that had just snorted through Ridgefield, was hurling destruction toward her with every revolution of its ponderous wheels.
She hadn't been afraid of Ridgefield, nor anything nor anybody connected with Ridgefield, for weeks now. At first the persistent silence of her mother and aunts, their apparent resolve not to answer her letters nor communicate with her in any way, had disturbed her. But not lately. Nothing disastrous had developed. Two or three times her father had sent her papers to sign, accompanied by a brief note explaining them. He was never a wordy man, and Reba had not considered his uncommunicativeness about her aunts and mother a bad omen.
Aunt Augusta was far away indeed from her thoughts as she hummed a little quiet song to herself the night after Nathaniel Cawthorne made his confession, standing in her tiny slate-walled dressing-room which, with a dozen others, bordered the swimming-pool, and donned the regulation dark blue swimming-suit, sleeveless, skirtless, reaching barely to her knees. She had been painfully self-conscious the first two or three times she had had to appear before the dozen girls and women in the pool in the abbreviated costume, but by this time she was perfectly at ease.
She was still humming when she appeared from the shower-bath five minutes later, sat down on the edge of the pool, and dangled her bare toes carelessly in the water. There was an ear-splitting din of high shrieks and hysterical laughter in the pool to-night. There usually was. Reba liked it. As she sat there dangling her toes, suddenly, with no warning, somebody gave her a shove from behind. It was little Lollie Terrence. Reba caught her shrill laugh before she struck the water.
What a friendly little creature Lollie was! Think of her bothering to play tricks on her—staid and proper, and twenty-five! Why, Lollie could do toe-dancing. Lollie was a great favorite. Well, it just seemed as if the world was possessed to be friendly to Reba to-day. She came up to the surface all smiles—rather sputtery ones—and pretended, with a playful motion, to splash water at Lollie Terrence, who was already dressed, and bent double over her joke beside the door of her dressing-room.
"All ready for a dive?" one of the instructors sang out to Reba. "Come, Miss Jerome, let's do three perfect ones to-night."
Reba's suit was clinging to her tightly as she walked out to the end of the spring-board. Her rubber cap hugged close to her forehead. Little streams of water dripped from her nose and finger-tips. She looked like a little slim Mercury with a close-cropped head, as she stood erect on the edge of the board a second. She had a boy's figure, with soft, gradual curves. Her profile was almost perfect. One was struck with the purity of line from finger-tip to ankle, as she stood and raised both her hands high in the air preparatory to springing, and inscribing, half in air, half in water, the big graceful semi-circle that inspired her so.
Reba could swim with some confidence now, and to-night her dive was a good one. The instructor told her so, as with her newly acquired over-arm stroke Reba approached the side of the tank. Of course, of course, it was a good one, she thought joyfully. Everything was good to-day.
"I'll try it again," she called out buoyantly.
"Do. You've a visitor in the gallery. Do try it again, and let her see it wasn't just an accident."
It was as sudden as that.
"A visitor?" queried Reba.
The instructor nodded. "Asked if she might look on a while," she said.
"A visitor?" Reba repeated.
"Over there. Left side." The instructor motioned galleryward, and turned away.
Reba glanced up. One glance was sufficient. It was Aunt Augusta!