Ladybird (27 page)

There it was: George Rivington Seagrave! There simply couldn’t be two of that name, not with Rivington in it.

“What are you doing writing to Rivie Seagrave?” Violet asked in wide astonishment, searching Fraley’s face suspiciously. “Wherever in the world did you meet him?”

“Out on the prairie somewhere, under a tree. I told you about it on the train. He’s the man I sent the Bible to.”

“Yes, you said his name was Seagrave, I remember, but you didn’t say it was Rivington. How could that possibly be? I couldn’t think of any man less likely to want a Bible than Rivington Seagrave. Yet you said, didn’t you, that he was preaching or something like that. It certainly must have been a practical joke of some kind. Of course, it can’t be Riv. He would no more know how to preach than I would.”

“He said he didn’t know how,” said Fraley gravely. “He was doing it for some poor fellow that was taken to the hospital just before train time. The other man was afraid he would lose his job if somebody didn’t hold it down for him.”

“Well, that sounds more like him. He’s always been kindhearted, but dear me! Riv Seagrave. That’s rich!”

Something in Fraley’s heart rose in defense.

“He had a wonderful meeting,” she said. “I went to it. He read the Bible, and he sang like the heavenly choirs.”

“Yes, I’ll admit he can sing like an angel, but Riv Seagrave reading the Bible! That’s too good a joke!”

Fraley froze.

“He did not make a joke out of it,” she said quietly, and in her voice was a gentle rebuke.

“Well, that may be so,” said Violet, “but he certainly must have met with a change of heart, then.”

“I think he has,” Fraley said quietly.

“Well, I advise you to lay off that young man, Fraley,” said Violet good-naturedly as she handed back the letter. “You see, he’s almost as good as engaged to Alison Fraley, and I want you two to be friends. I wouldn’t mention him to her if I were you.”

Fraley went quietly on down the stairs, out the door, and down to the corner where she mailed her letter, but she no longer smiled.

She had dropped her letter in the post office box at the corner and turned to go back to the house when suddenly it came to her that she ought not to have mailed that letter. Her raven was engaged to another girl, and she had no right to be writing him letters, even such simple, friendly letters as this. There was no longer need for her to write him because he had a Bible, and that would give him all the light he needed for his work. She had been crazy to think she needed to write him anymore. He had probably forgotten all about her, anyway, by this time.

Of course, she had promised to let him know where she was, but well, the letter was gone now, unless she stayed out there and asked the postman to give it back to her, which he wouldn’t likely do.

Well, never mind, it could do no harm, and if he ever came back to New York or if he wrote her a nice little note thanking her for anything, she would let him understand that she knew it was all in friendliness. She would simply drop the thought of him out of her heart. But oh, how was she going to do it? Her one friend! And that kiss! What was she going to do with the memory of that kiss? She could not bury it as if it were dead. She could not extract it as if it were a thorn. It was there on her brow forever, and it was hers; rightfully or no, it was hers and did not belong to another.

Then she remembered that he had called her an angel. That was it! That made it all right on his part to have kissed her. He had not looked upon her as a young girl, not as he would have thought of the girl to whom he was engaged, but as a dear little girl, a sort of angel. Angels were holy beings, and he had simply given her a high tribute with that kiss as if she were someone set above himself. He was a raven and she was an angel, and there was nothing meant by that kiss but a kind of homage.

So she reasoned it over and over, trying to make the situation assume a different aspect in her mind.

She walked up and down the block several times, tying to get adjusted so that that kiss would not be a thorn in her heart. Trying to tell herself that she had never taken it to have any special meaning other than tenderness for a lost child.

When she went back to the house, there was a sad little smile on her face, and she held her head up proudly.

Back in her room she tried to face the immediate present.

“She is coming,” she told herself. “The girl he loves! I must go down and meet her pretty soon. I must not think of that kiss as anything that ever belonged to me.”

Then Jeanne tapped at the door.

“Miss Fraley, Madam would like you to come down. Tea is served in the library, and Miss Alison Fraley is there.”

Fraley smoothed her hair, dashed cold water in her face, dabbed it with a soft towel, and went downstairs with a look of peace upon her brow.

A
lison Fraley was lounging in a corner of a couch, her long, slim legs crossed and stretched out to their fullest extent. She was smoking a cigarette.

Fraley had, of course, not been away all summer in fashionable hotels and restaurants without knowing that women nowadays smoked; but she had a strange aversion to it that, so far, Violet Wentworth had been unable to break down, though Violet herself had never yet smoked in the presence of the mountain girl.

Fraley came into the room with an air of sweet aloofness. Her fine patrician chin was lifted just the least bit but not haughtily, her lips made a firm little line of courage, and in her eyes was a look that puzzled the two women who awaited her.

Fraley had a lack of self-consciousness in the presence of strangers that constantly astonished her benefactress. Violet called it poise, though one usually thinks of poise as a thing that is acquired, not inherited. If this girl had acquired her poise, she had got it from her mountain distances and her close touch with holy things. The world troubled her, but it did not embarrass her.

She came forward quite easily and acknowledged the introduction, but there was a reservation in her attitude, a lack of response save a distant little smile when Violet said she hoped these two girls would be friends. It was as if she held her friendship in abeyance until she should find out whether the other girl were such as she could take into the innermost citadel of her heart.

The other girl showed her lack of poise by her rudeness. She did not rise from her slouching attitude, nor show any courtesy of tone as she spoke, and she puffed a stream of smoke into the air even before she nodded.

“Well, it seems we’re booked to have a crush on each other,” she flung out almost insolently. “I can’t imagine either of us picking out the other for a pal, but Vi seems to think we should, so I suppose we shall. How about Thursday morning? We’ll go to the country club and have some golf. Vi says you play.”

“Thank you,” said Fraley simply and tried to smile.

She was studying this other girl, with her long, slim legs slung out in front of her, the cigarette drooping from her listless fingers, with her sullen, discontented eyes. She was wondering how a girl like this came to be a friend of the breezy, healthy, vivid man of the wilderness. She saw him now in memory as he stood in the dim shadows of the old log schoolhouse reading from her mother’s cotton-covered Bible, the candlelight flickering on his earnest face and putting glints into the crispness of the wave of hair over his forehead. She heard his voice again, reading the Bible, groping his way to the truth as if he meant it, and she could not think of this girl as having been present or entering into the spirit of the gathering.

Violet was busying herself with the tea things, making sharp, clinking little sounds with the spoons as she laid them down in the egg-shell saucers. Fraley could see that she was watching her furtively, and presently she spoke, but it was to the other girl she directed her conversation.

“What do you hear from Riv?” she asked casually. But suddenly Fraley understood why she had asked the question. Riv was the strange name she had called Mr. Seagrave. Even “Raven” that he had asked her to use would be too intimate, now that she knew he was to marry someone else. Of course she had never expected him to marry
her
. She had not thought anything at all about it except that he was her friend, and as long as he had a perfect right to be that nothing more had occurred to her. But now that she knew he belonged to another, she felt that she had no right to a special friendship like that with him. There was an inborn fineness in her soul, which her mother had, perhaps almost unconsciously, fostered.

It occurred to Fraley suddenly as she tried not to start at Violet’s question that perhaps Mr. Seagrave had written to this other girl all about finding her in the desert in a tree, and a wave of color swept up softly into her cheeks as she turned her grave eyes to hear the answer to Violet’s question.

“Riv? Oh, I’m off him for life,” said the slow, insolent voice as the slim arm went lazily out to accept the cup of tea her hostess was passing her. “He’s off on a trip somewhere. I haven’t heard a word from him all summer. He got one of his stubborn fits, insisted he had to go somewhere else when Gwen had a house party at the shore and particularly wanted him, and he hasn’t turned up since. But he’ll come soon now, I suppose. He’s always on deck when things begin. He’ll be back in time for the tournaments. He never misses those. I suppose he thinks he’s been giving me a much-needed lesson, staying away all summer without a word, but I’ve been having the time of my life with Dicky Whitehead. You know he’s just got a divorce, and he’s like a bird let loose.”

Something fiery glowed in Fraley’s eyes, but she busied her gaze with the little cakes on her plate and gave the two women who were watching her no satisfaction. She wondered if Violet had said anything to her guest about the letter before she came down, but she maintained a discreet silence and got over the hard place.

Alison Fraley presently turned to her and began to talk golf and tennis, putting Fraley through a catechism to see if she knew anything at all. Finding her quite intelligent, she decided she would make it a point to be at the golf links on Thursday.

The conversation touched on books. Alison wanted to borrow a new book that Violet had just bought.

“That is, when you both have read it, of course,” she added with unusual politeness.

“Oh, you can have it now,” said Violet, ringing for the maid. “I finished it last night, read till half past two. Fraley would not care for it.”

“Fraley?” said the other girl with a sudden startled survey of the mountain girl and a sharp look toward her hostess. “Is that your name?”

Fraley nodded.

“Where on earth did you get that name? It’s mine, you know.”

“Yes,” said Fraley, “I know. Mine is a family name.” She felt oddly averse to telling this girl that her whole name had belonged to her mother.

“It would be odd, wouldn’t it, if you and I should turn out to be relatives,” said the other girl, again with that startled look in her bold eyes. “Well, if it should be that way, of course, you are nothing to be ashamed of. But, how odd! Did you get us here just to spring this on us, Vi?” asked Alison.

“Well, why not?” answered Violet enigmatically but did not seem disposed to talk further about it. “When did you say your people are returning?” she asked, as if weary of the other subject.

“Dad is crossing this week, but Mother is waiting to come till Aunt Greta is ready. It may be a fortnight yet. Aunt Greta is afraid of the September storms and made such a fuss Mother had to give in.”

Violet’s eyes narrowed. “Bring your father over some evening when he gets back. We’ll have a little bridge. But you’ll have to get somebody else to make a fourth. Fraley won’t learn. Perhaps Rivington will be back by that time.”

“Perhaps ” said the girl, yawning indifferently, “or I’ll bring Dicky. He is simply great at bridge, you know. But why don’t you play?” she asked, turning suddenly to Fraley.

“It bores her,” said Violet sharply, answering for the girl.

Alison took out a little gold case and handed it over to the other girl.

“Have a smoke with me,” she said, watching her narrowly.

Fraley drew back. She felt as if she were being put through a series of tests.

“Thank you, no,” she said, summoning a withdrawing smile.

But the other girl still held out the gold case.

“Oh, cut it,” she said. “This is as good a time as any to begin if you don’t like it. You’ll soon get over that. You know you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t smoke or play bridge.”

Fraley turned wide, amused eyes upon her.

“That depends on where you want to get,” she said.

“What’s the matter, does your mother object?” asked Alison with scorn in her voice. “You know that doesn’t cut any ice in the world today.”

“My mother,” said Fraley with a slight lift of her lovely head, “is in heaven.” And there was a look of sudden tears suppressed in the shining eyes with which she looked straight at the other girl.

It may be that Alison was embarrassed, but if she was it took the form of rudeness again.

“That must be comfortable,” she said with a half sneer. “It must leave you pretty free! But of course,” she added as she saw a dangerous look in the stranger’s eyes, “if you don’t feel that way, it’s rather rotten.”

“I don’t feel that way,” said Fraley briefly, struggling to hide the desire to rush from the room and cry.

“She doesn’t care for me, Vi,” said Alison amusedly, turning to the older woman. “I haven’t got on at all, and here I have been doing my best to be amusing.”

“You’re all right,” said the lady, pouring another cup of tea for herself. “You don’t understand each other yet. You have to find the keynote first before you can play harmoniously, you know. Fraley’s a dear if you just know how to take her and when to let her have her own way.”

Fraley twinkled into an appreciative smile. If Violet was pleased and cared enough to defend her, what did it matter what this other girl said or thought?

But though the atmosphere was not quite so electrically charged after that, and the talk went on for perhaps a half hour more before the visitor took her languid leave, Fraley said very little. She could not get away from her own thoughts enough to think of something to say in this strange new environment. Before, this kind of thing had only revolved in a wide circle around the place where she was, but now she had been pushed intimately into it, and she felt like a fish out of water.